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98–603 PDF 2005

FAITH-BASED PERSPECTIVES ON THE PROVISION

OF COMMUNITY SERVICES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 26, 2004

Serial No. 108–278

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

——— ———

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

ELIZABETH MEYER, Professional Staff Member

MALIA HOLST, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on April 26, 2004 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Drake, Harvey, executive director, Emerald City Outreach Ministry, Seattle, WA; Pastor Gregg Alex, director, executive director, the Matt

Talbot Center, Seattle, WA; Pastor Doug Wheeler, Zion Preparatory

Academy, Seattle, WA; and Pastor Aaron Haskins, executive director,

Coalition for Community Development and Renewal, Seattle, WA .......... 125

Esau, Jill, executive Director, We Care Northwest, Seattle, WA; Dan

Neary, senior vice president for college advancement, Northwest College, Kirkland, WA; Cal Uomoto, affiliate director, World Relief, Seattle, WA; Marc Maislen, Seattle Hebrew Academy, Seattle, WA; and

Mary Diggs Hobson, executive director, African American Reach and

Teach Ministry, Seattle, WA ........................................................................ 14

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Alex, Pastor Gregg, director, executive director, the Matt Talbot Center,

Seattle, WA, information concerning the Matt Talbot Center .................. 145

Drake, Harvey, executive director, Emerald City Outreach Ministry, Seattle, WA, prepared statement of ................................................................ 129

Esau, Jill, executive Director, We Care Northwest, Seattle, WA, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 17

Haskins, Pastor Aaron, executive director, Coalition for Community Development and Renewal, Seattle, WA, information concerning CCDR

Coalition ......................................................................................................... 150

Hobson, Mary Diggs, executive director, African American Reach and

Teach Ministry, Seattle, WA, prepared statement of ................................ 87

Maislen, Marc, Seattle Hebrew Academy, Seattle, WA, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 81

Neary, Dan, senior vice president for college advancement, Northwest

College, Kirkland, WA, prepared statement of ........................................... 64

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, prepared statement of ............................................................... 5

Uomoto, Cal, affiliate director, World Relief, Seattle, WA, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 70

Wheeler, Pastor Doug, Zion Preparatory Academy, Seattle, WA, information concerning Zion Preparatory Academy ................................................ 155

(1)

FAITH-BASED PERSPECTIVES ON THE

PROVISION OF COMMUNITY SERVICES

MONDAY, APRIL 26, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND

HUMAN RESOURCES, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Seattle, WA.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., at Emerald City Outreach Ministries, 7728 Rainier Avenue S., Seattle,

WA, Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representative Souder.

Staff present: Malia Holst, clerk; Elizabeth Meyer, professional

staff member and counsel; and Alena Guagenti, legislative clerk.

Mr. SOUDER. The subcommittee will come to order.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today as we continue

our discussion of the role of faith-based organizations in the provision of social services. We are privileged to be conducting this hearing at the Emerald City Outreach Ministry facility.

Before I get into the opening statement about what we do with

faith-based, let me just briefly explain what our subcommittee is

and how we work and function. In the Congress you have authorizing committees, for example, on education policy. When I sat on

that committee we did No Child Left Behind, for example. So you

have the No Child Left Behind bill. You have the appropriations

committee that then funds the bill, because when you design it you

say you can spend up to this amount in these different categories.

The appropriating committees then appropriate up to what the authorizing committee said they could in specific categories. But they

get to choose how to allocate the funding. And then last you have

oversight committees.

And this subcommittee is part of the Government Reform and

Oversight Committee. So we divide up in Government Reform and

Oversight different subcommittees to make sure that what Congress authorized and then funded gets executed the way it was intended. So in the case of faith-based organizations, funding and

any programs sometimes may be authorized. And sometimes it just

may be initiated by the White House.

Well, the subcommittee that I chair, which has the broad name

of Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, predominantly what we focus on is national drug policy. That has been an

evolving process in the committee because we not only do the oversight of any drug policy in any agency, but we do the authorizing

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for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. This means we write

much of the drug legislation that comes through and then oversee

to see that it gets implemented.

About half of our time to two-thirds of our time is spent on drug

control policy, but we have a broad jurisdiction of other agencies.

And depending on what you want to focus on as chairman of the

subcommittee and how you want to function, we have jurisdiction

over the Department of Education, Department of Housing and

Urban Development, HUD; over Department of HHS, Health and

Human Services; in addition to Department of Commerce. So we’ll

dabble in different things, although we’ve mostly focused on narcotics, the office of faith-based, the role of faith-based institutions and

the National Park Service because they overlap with some of the

other interests. Can you hear me better? To give you some ideas,

sometimes it’s kind of standard oversight, like what we’re doing in

this series of hearings. And I’m going to describe what we’re doing

in faith-based, and sometimes it can be more contentious.

When I was first elected to Congress this is the committee—not

this subcommittee, but the committee did the Waco hearings, we

did the China hearings, we did the Whitewater, some of that. We

did what happened in the travel office. Any type of executive

branch China issues and whether we let some secrets get to China.

In other words, much of what you see when it hits the news are

those type of high profile things. But this is the type of thing we

do on a regular basis in order to analyze what the government is

doing, and making sure that what we’ve funded and authorized in

other committees gets implemented. That’s the context of this.

Most of those hearings occur in Washington, DC, the other

Washington. But we try to get out and hold field hearings to hear

from people at the grassroots level, not only because you can hear

more when you get out to the grassroots and get a regional feel for

different things. But you also get a little less intimidated effect

than you have in Washington. The national associations will tend

to control the testimony much more tightly in Washington than

when you’re out in the different regional areas.

With that, let me go back to my formal statement. And let me

say one other thing. The testimony you’ll give today then gets

printed up, and goes into a hearing book. This series of faith-based

hearings we’re doing, is special. There have probably been no other

committee initiatives. There’s probably only about two other House

hearings that have ever been held, other than this series of hearings, and those have mostly been on the legal questions as it relates to a bill moving forward. They haven’t been oversight hearings on what’s happening in the faith-based area as a whole;

they’re focused on particular parts of the legislation that move

forth when we moved that in Congress.

So this hearing book will be part of a permanent record so as researchers look and say, what were they doing in these years when

they argued about faith-based, there will be seven hearings that

we’ve done in the different regions of the country that will be the

ultimate kind of, the biggest chunk of data that will exist at the

Federal level on faith-based organizations in the United States.

The focus isn’t so much on how many Members are at a given hearing or whether there’s lots of press at it. We’re building a record

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and a background information as people look at the faith-based

issue.

Many faith-based and community organizations across our Nation understand that they have a duty to help those who are less

fortunate than they are. We are a Nation richly blessed, not only

with government resources, but also with caring individuals who

dedicate their lives to helping others. Through Charitable Choice

and the Faith-Based Initiative, the government has recognized the

tremendous resource it has in its faith community, and in neighborhood-based organizations. These groups have the ability to

reach out to men and women that the government may never know

exist.

If, in the United States, we had an unlimited amount of money,

we’d be able to fund every organization that is effectively providing

social services. The hard reality is that we don’t have unlimited resources. So we have to find a way to get the dollars we do have

into the hands of those most effective and the agencies that are

most effective in the neighborhood. The Faith-Based Initiative is

designed to bring neutrality to the government grant system so

that smaller community and faith-based organizations can expand

their capacity to help people in their communities that might otherwise be overlooked.

Neutrality toward all applicants requires the government partner

not only with secular organizations, in effect recognizing a Statesponsored secularism, but it demands that government look at the

merits of each program. Is the program helping substance abusers

kick addiction? Is it helping a homeless woman find a home and

a job? Is the program making a difference in the life of a child who

has lost a parent to prison?

Catholic Charities is an organization that for decades has been

held up as an example, even by critics of the Faith-Based Initiative, of how government partnerships with faith-based organizations are working, because they held the service arm of the organization under a separate incorporated organization. Now the California Supreme Court has said that because Catholic Charities offers secular services to clients, the majority of whom are not Catholic, and does not directly preach Catholic values, the court ruled

that because of that, because it is not a religious organization, it

must therefore provide services contrary to Catholic teachings.

Let me restate that again because this is a new development

since any of our last hearings. The California Supreme Court, because often we hear from faith-based organizations, ‘‘Oh, we serve

everybody.’’ Yes, anybody who gets any money from the government has been required to serve anybody. But because they serve

anybody in providing food and healthcare and other things, they

have been classified as a non-religious entity. The California Supreme Court isn’t above that yet, that it is not a religious organization, because delivering food was not a specifically religious thing.

And they’ve been told that basically, in this case it was a hospital,

that they’d have to perform abortions. They have to now do things

that they don’t approve of because they served people who weren’t

Catholic. And as it turned, it turned on its head and is a new problem.

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A representative of Catholic Charities of California had planned

to be with us this morning, but had an unavoidable conflict arise

that prevented his appearance. They will be submitting testimony

for the record that will appear in this hearing, and the subcommittee will continue to focus on the ability of faith-based organizations

to provide services and partner with the government if they so

choose, while not being required to redefine their mission in order

to form those partnerships with the government.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. We’ve been having this discussion in Washington

for quite some time. What I find to be the most frustrating is the

tendency to lose sight of the reason we are having the discussion

in the first place. We know that faith-based organizations are effectively transforming lives and communities. Where the discussion

gets bogged down is in the legal questions. We need to refocus the

discussion on what makes a faith-based organization successful.

What is it that makes them effective? The fact that faith-based organizations are effective is the reason we began the discussion in

the first place. It is a time to listen to the providers tell us how

we can best assist them in their work. I doubt that they think government strings and bureaucratic red tape is something that

they’re actively seeking or would desire to seek. I believe that one

of the best ways we as legislators can help is not by giving you

more government strings to deal with, but by helping to facilitate

new relationships among the providers of social services and the

foundations that provide financial and technical assistance to faithbased and community organizations.

The administration has established the offices for faith-based

and community initiatives in seven executive branch departments.

These offices have been charged with identifying the barriers to the

participation of faith-based organizations in providing social services. In addition, these agencies have been working to reach out to

faith-based and community organizations that have not previously

partnered with the government. Some progress has been made, but

I believe we have a long way yet to go before we see a truly level

playing field. The government has a very high duty to provide the

most effective services available in the most effective, efficient

manner possible. We need to constantly be looking for the programs that are helping to improve lives in the communities and

help those organizations expand their capacity.

At the end of the day, we as legislators need to know we are

using all available resources to help improve the lives of men,

women and children who need help. We need the faith-based community as partners. Today we have a great opportunity to talk

with providers of a range of faith-based services who have been

working diligently to provide positive change in the Seattle community. We need to understand how the unique element of faith impacts the structure and success of these programs.

In Seattle you have developed a strong network of organizations

that not only have a strong faith, but a strong heart for helping

people in need. Our witnesses today are just a small fraction of the

many programs that are meeting the needs of the greater Seattle

area. I am anxious to learn about your work, your history, and

where you believe your community is headed, and I look forward

to your testimony.

This is likely to be our last of the field hearings that we have

been conducting for about a year and a half, in Texas, Tennessee,

Chicago, Colorado and North Carolina. Did we do one in Florida?

So we’ve done some in the Midwest, some in the Southwest, this

is the upper Northwest, so we’ve been pretty well covering America. We, of course, also had a number in Washington, DC.

Now, we need to do some procedural things. I ask unanimous

consent that any Members have 5 legislative days to submit writVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:25 Mar 10, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98603.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ten statements and questions to the hearing record, and that any

answers to written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in the record. Without objection, it is so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents and other

materials referred to by Members and the witnesses may be included in the hearing record, and that all Members be permitted

to revise and extend their remarks. Without objection, it is so ordered.

What that means is that we have a 5-minute rule that we will

be a little lenient with, but we don’t want to get too disproportionate between the different people. Does this have a yellow? That will

signal with a minute to go, but your full statement will be submitted to the record. If I ask any questions and you want to submit

additional materials, or if you have additional materials that come

up, either from the first or second panel, if you give them to us

we’ll insert those into the hearing record. And also if you refer to

something we should get a copy of it. If it’s a chart or something

that you want to refer to we need to get that in the record, so if

somebody reads it and they’re going through, that the material

that you’re referring to is in the hearing record.

Now, because this is an oversight committee, it’s the only committee in Congress where all our witnesses are sworn in. We’ve

only had, I think, two cases of prosecution for perjury, but in fact

it happens. It’s different than the other committees because it’s actually an enforcement committee. So I need you each to stand and

raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that all the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

And once again, thank you for coming. It’s wonderful to be here.

It’s nice of you to show the best of Seattle weather for us when we

came in today.

It’s a beautiful day, and we’re going to start with Jill Esau, executive director of We Care Northwest in Seattle.

STATEMENTS OF JILL ESAU, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WE CARE

NORTHWEST, SEATTLE, WA; DAN NEARY, SENIOR VICE

PRESIDENT FOR COLLEGE ADVANCEMENT, NORTHWEST

COLLEGE, KIRKLAND, WA; CAL UOMOTO, AFFILIATE DIRECTOR, WORLD RELIEF, SEATTLE, WA; MARC MAISLEN, SEATTLE HEBREW ACADEMY, SEATTLE, WA; AND MARY DIGGS

HOBSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AFRICAN AMERICAN

REACH AND TEACH MINISTRY, SEATTLE, WA

Ms. ESAU. Congressman Souder and your staff, we welcome you

to Seattle. And it’s always like this on April 26th, isn’t it?

The mission of We Care Northwest is to support the work of

faith-based and community service organizations with the technical

assistance, shared resources and national network of similar ministries, and advocacy efforts around the Puget Sound. We Care

Northwest envisions a region where the needs of the hardest to

serve are supplied by local communities such as churches,

parachurch organizations, neighbors and community partnerships

functioning in accountable relationships to produce measurable

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outcomes such as physical, spiritual, and emotional wholeness and

self-sufficiency.

We Care Northwest was founded in response to President Bush’s

Executive order announcing the Faith-Based and Community Initiative of 2001. It soon became clear that many faith-based and

grassroots organizations were indeed interested in forming partnerships with government agencies, but few had grant writing and

lobbying expertise or understanding of how government systems

work. The need for shared information, training in best practices,

and government contract methods was apparent, yet no entity existed in the Northwest to provide these. We Care Northwest has

tried to represent faith-based and grassroots organizations in the

public arena, while promoting the value and quality of the services

they provide.

The documents included in this written testimony, and I believe

you have this booklet, give examples, just a few examples, of the

progress We Care Northwest has made in the past 3 years. We now

are under contract through our affiliate organization, We Care

America in Washington, DC, to conduct technical trainings for

SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, which is a division of the Department of Health & Human

Services. We are called upon to testify in the State legislature on

behalf of faith-based issues, and I have briefed the staff of Governor Gary Locke on two occasions. We Care Northwest has also

been invited to co-sponsor a statewide conference on substance

abuse and mental health prevention later in the year.

These documents are not in sequential order, nor do they include

all of our accomplishments to date, but they trace the progression

of our advocacy efforts on behalf of faith-based and community organizations around the State in the midst of discouraging and

sometimes hostile environments. I’ve been told by our attorney general’s office that Washington State, ‘‘Is not participating in the

Faith-Based Initiative.’’ You’ll also read in Document No. 3 in the

booklet that the State’s mental health budget for 2002 was a half

billion dollars, yet the DSHS staff could not name one faith-based

organization in their list of providers.

The issue of State contracts is so well concealed that even State

legislators are not aware that DSHS is not obligated to consider

new proposals from outside contractors. Of course, this makes it

next to impossible for faith-based and grassroots organizations to

acquire contracts for service, and it reinforces the ‘‘good ole’ boy

network’’ that has been in place for decades. Yet, with all the management problems in the State social service agency, including a

recent embarrassing judgment of $17.8 million for negligence, we

continue to fight a losing battle in the pursuit of equal consideration for quality services provided on shoestring budgets.

Perhaps the greatest concern for faith-based organizations in

Washington State and around the country is the disturbing developments in Congress that would strip away our protections that

are granted to faith-based groups to hire staff of like mind and religious conviction. This one component is a two-edged sword. It creates the culture of an organization through the personalities and

values of those who conduct the direct service, and it could render

such services ineffective by removing the very elements that have

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guided the attitudes, practices, and motivations of faith-based organizations for centuries. By rescinding the ministerial exemption

Congress will be eliminating the vast majority of potential faithbased partners in the war against poverty, AIDS, substance abuse,

criminal recidivism and the other traditional societal ills that

plague us. There simply is no compromise on this matter.

We Care Northwest will continue to work on behalf of faith-based

and grassroots organizations that are committed to the call we believe the Almighty has placed on our lives: To lead the brokenhearted into physical, spiritual and emotional wholeness, until the

need is no more.

Thank you for making this hearing possible today, and thank you

for asking the critical questions we have been longing to answer.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Esau follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Next is Dan Neary, the senior vice president for

College Advancement at Northwest College in Kirkland, WA.

Mr. NEARY. Congressman Souder, welcome to Seattle. Thank you

for this opportunity to address you regarding faith-based organizations and our ability to offer services to our communities, especially

in partnership with the Federal Government.

It’s my hope that you will look to higher education as a model

of a longstanding, successful partnership between government and

faith-based organizations.

Northwest College, of course, is a faith-based organization. Our

college started just over 70 years ago in partnership with a church

here in Seattle, and continues to enjoy strong ties to our local

churches throughout the region and our denomination, the Assemblies of God. Today, Northwest College has nearly 1,200 students

studying in over 50 academic programs. We enjoy full accreditation

and will complete an official transformation to Northwest University on January 1, 2005.

Our Nursing program does a fine job of highlighting the way

Northwest College partners with the Federal Government to successfully deliver community services. You know that our country

faces a real crisis in that we currently face a shortage of qualified

nurses, and the future holds even more severe shortages. We responded by starting the Mark & Huldah Buntain School of Nursing

just 4 years ago. Today over 120 students are pursuing a career in

nursing at Northwest College.

The Federal Government’s partnership in this important endeavor is twofold. First off, these students, of course, benefit from Federal financial aid programs, including the Pell Grant and Stafford

Student Loan programs. Their eligibility for these vital funds allows students to study in our unique program.

No. 2, through efforts spearheaded by Congressman George

Nethercutt, Northwest College has been awarded a line item appropriation that will help build a nursing education and science facility that will enable the nursing school to grow.

The Federal Government’s partnership is, as it should be, based

on clearly stated guidelines and goals that have nothing to do with

our college’s or our students’ faith commitments. The Federal Government’s funding is based entirely on eligibility verified by objective qualifications, including accreditation. Faith commitments neither qualify nor disqualify our students or institution from funding.

We feel that our faith commitments do indeed add value. In the

specific case of nursing, distinguished nursing educators from both

Washington State University and the University of Washington

have candidly told us that they envy our unique position. They

speak of their calling to nursing. They speak of nursing being a career of compassion. When dealing with issues of life and death,

they express great appreciation for the way our students’ faith is

able to undergird their professional skill to perform well in this career of compassion with excellence.

This is just one example of an excellent partnership between our

faith-based institution and the Federal Government.

Your staff has asked me specifically to reflect today on implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision on Locke vs.

Davey. In a seven-to-two decision handed down on February 25th

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the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Joshua Davey, a 2003 honor

graduate of Northwest College. The case, Locke vs. Davey, challenged Washington State’s right to deny Davey a scholarship based

on his pursuit of theological study.

Clearly, we were disappointed. We have supported Josh throughout this process and were confident that the Supreme Court would

uphold last fall’s ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court.

This ruling could have dramatic ramifications, as it seems to

allow discrimination based on religion. It appears that the Supreme

Court is now saying to States that it is permissible to limit access

to government programs based solely on a student’s choice of major

that could prepare that student to serve a local community in ministry. This is a sad day. The Court preferred the State’s right to

discriminate based on religious affiliation and pursuit rather than

upholding a student’s rights of free exercise of religion.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of appeals ruled in Davey’s favor.

The ruling required the Washington Education Coordinating Board

to provide financial aid to qualified students who choose to study

theology. The Court said the State statute prohibiting the payment

of State financial aid to students pursuing degrees in theology violated the first amendment’s religious freedom provision.

The case arose after Joshua Davey of Spokane was declared ineligible for a Washington Promise scholarship. The Higher Education Coordinating Board has relied on State law that prohibits financial aid awards to students who pursue a degree in theology.

Davey enrolled in both Business Administration and Pastoral Ministries at Northwest College.

While Northwest College was never a participant in this suit, we

have supported Josh’s position. This decision by the Supreme Court

contradicts what has been the historical position on this matter. Financial aid issues are directly between the student and the corresponding government entity, whether State or Federal. After receiving an award the student is free to use it to invest in an educational future at any accredited institution.

In accordance with long-standing financial aid principles, government financial aid is a transaction between the government and

the student. The college has responsibilities to establish accredited

academic programs, assure that students are qualified, and that financial aid is appropriately applied to a student’s academic pursuits.

The Supreme Court’s ruling will result in students in our school

of ministry that include majors in youth ministry and children’s

ministry and pastoral ministry losing access to all financial aid provided by the State of Washington. We expect this to impact around

23 students next year, with lost aid totaling over $100,000. Under

current State rules these students could choose any other major at

our institution or any other accredited college or university in the

State, but because they are pursuing a major that could help them

serve a local community as a pastor they are being forced to forfeit

these funds.

We are concerned that the Supreme Court’s decision will continue to limit study at our institution as well as others around the

country. As I understand it, over 30 States have similar language

in their State constitutions. As State budgets are cut we are conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:25 Mar 10, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00066 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98603.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cerned that students in colleges and universities like ours will continue to be marginalized. We have already seen this occur when

Governor Locke exercised his line item veto several weeks ago,

eliminating the possibility for students in high need vocations, including nursing, as well as math and science teacher education, to

receive State assistance in a recent new initiative that has now

been limited to State-controlled institutions.

In closing, I’d like to acknowledge that Governor Locke was right

all along when he identified Joshua Davey as a student of promise.

Davey graduated from our college on May 10th of last year with

highest academic honors, with a major in religion and philosophy.

He was selected by students and faculty to deliver the student address at commencement exercises. He is now finishing his first year

of studies in pursuit of a law degree at Harvard Law School. We

are proud of Josh.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Neary follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Next is Mr. Cal Uomoto, affiliate director of World

Relief, Seattle, WA.

Mr. UOMOTO. Thank you, Honorable Congressman. I appreciate

this opportunity to testify before this committee.

My name is Cal Uomoto, and I’m here representing the Seattle

regional office of World Relief, which is a faith-based human services agency that serves the needs of refugees and immigrants.

A dozen years ago my wife and I welcomed our first refugee family into our home; actually, 24 years ago. As we introduced this

Mien family from the Laotian Highlands to the urban ways of life

they were fascinated with our toaster. One cord to plug into a wall,

a place to put sliced white bread, and its sole function was to

brown this bread on both sides. I think sometimes faith-based

funding is like this toaster. Faith-based ideals go in white bread,

how can we ensure they come out brown and not burnt?

I’ve provided this committee with a comprehensive list, a snapshot, of World Relief Seattle-based programs. These range from resettlement of new refugees families from war and persecution overseas, to programs that help in their adjustment to a new life here,

English As a Second Language, job orientation and placement,

counseling over immigration forms, naturalization classes for the

elderly.

World Relief is actually one of the exceptions to the rule. World

Relief has been a faith-based organization that contracts with the

Federal Government for about 25 years. And World Relief is a

Protestant Christian organization, and in the Seattle area we serve

the needs of about 1,300 refugee immigrants yearly. Nationally we

have about 25, 26 offices in different cities where we do the same

thing. Here we partner with a dozen local churches, many refugee

mutual assistance associations, and employers, two dozen employers over a three-county area, to carry out our services.

I do want to point out that in my testimony I have a sheet on

the role of faith in the agency, and this actually is the key to understanding our particular agency, World Relief. Faith is the main

motivating factor in working for this agency. World Relief employs

individuals who feel a sense of God’s calling to work with refugees

and immigrants. We try to teach staff the knowledge of biblical

principles on treatment of foreigners and aliens, the church’s history in reaching out for immigrants, and the experience of Christians as refugees. I should point out that the largest bulk of refugees in the greater Seattle area are people of faith coming from the

Soviet Union.

We teach our staff to use spiritual tools. We confront many inhumanities and horrors perpetrated on our clients by governments

and other persons. We feel that faith gives us the philosophic tools

to understand the larger questions of evil and suffering in the

world. And this approach and the common values shared by the

staff forms the framework for the practices of our organization and

its service to refugees.

We also are organizationally connected in the larger sense to a

body called the National Association of Evangelicals, and so we feel

a kinship with various Protestant denominations here, the churches, colleges, etc. And we feel that our role here in the Seattle area

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is to become the bridge between the world of refugees and the

world of the church.

I just wanted to bring a couple of concerns that we have had in

terms of my years as the director here, as a faith-based organization receiving government funding. I think the major concern with

a faith-based organization is the need to have control over its hiring policy in order to safeguard its mission viability. We’re afraid

that government funding will encroach on the particular values

that we hold, and the fact that hiring values held by us and our

constituency, which are churches, denominations, etc., may not be

honored or that they may be sued for a particular stand, and that

is one of the big fears of faith-based organizations.

I can just give you one example. World Relief was awarded a contract with a local municipality. In that year that particular city

council passed an ordinance mandating a non-discrimination policy

regarding sexual orientation for all contractors, all agencies that

contract with the City. This was not acceptable to the board of

World Relief. World Relief Seattle gave up the contract, even

though we had been working in the program for 2 months. We’ve

had similar experiences. For many years we had a work study contract with a local university, and at one point it was just summarily denied, saying that we could not have it because we were

a faith-based organization.

Another issue that sometimes comes up is the lack of understanding between a government and its enforcing of programs, and

the particular actions that a faith-based agency may have looking

at it in a critical light. In my statement I state, ‘‘and sometimes

bat away any behavior they see as religious.’’ I gave one example

in my statement.

At one point a World Relief office was cited because a refugee

family requested a clergyman to accompany them to the airport

and say a prayer of welcome for their new family that was arriving;

their relatives. This clergyman was in a World Relief office during

an audit and was asked by the audit staff what he did at the airport arrival. When he innocently related that he prayed for the

family that arrived, the World Relief office was cited for, ‘‘proselytizing the new refugee family.’’ And the auditors would not listen to the explanation over the role of the clergyman, and the fact

that he was not in a paid staff capacity for this episode, and that

the request was made by the welcoming family here in America.

That didn’t seem to matter to the auditors.

So we have many examples like this we could cite, but in conclusion I just want to thank you because I believe the role of this committee is important to try to understand how we do our services

and what breadth we do them with and who we do them with.

And I just want to say that the Laotian families that I’ve befriended many years ago that fled for their lives are now successfully resettled. They have flourished in safety. The parents are citizens, many kids are graduated from the University of Washington,

they drive newer cars now than I do and live in larger houses.

They’ve survived the transition here because of agencies like World

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Relief, and they are a successful American story. So we just hope

that you will help us to continue doing the services that we love

to do. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Uomoto follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Next, Mr. Marc Maislen.

Mr. MAISLEN. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. From the Seattle Hebrew Academy.

Mr. MAISLEN. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I am Marc Maislen, director of development of the Seattle Hebrew Academy.

On behalf of the whole Seattle Hebrew Academy family I welcome the opportunity to speak to you today about our experience

with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. I apologize in advance that I may not be able to answer all of your questions, but will be happy to provide written answers to those questions I cannot answer.

For the record, Seattle Hebrew Academy, or SHA, is a nonprofit

educational organization established in 1920. We are an Orthodox

Jewish school and primarily serve families who want their children

to receive a high quality secular education and a traditional Jewish

education from preschool to eighth grade. Our students come from

all backgrounds within the Jewish community. The faculty and

staff are from all stripes of the Jewish and non-Jewish community.

SHA’s main building, an historic landmark dating from 1907,

sustained severe damage on February 28, 2001, when the

Nisqually Earthquake, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, struck

Western Washington. At the time of the earthquake President

Bush immediately declared the quake zone a national disaster

area. Because our main classroom and office building were rendered unfit, we sought assistance in reconstituting the building

from FEMA and the Small Business Administration.

Today with the help of many generous donors and from FEMA

we are scheduled to move back into our newly refurbished building

this coming fall.

Mr. Chairman, we wish we could say that FEMA was on our side

from day 1. Unfortunately, as I will briefly discuss, until President

Bush issued his directive on December 12, 2002, FEMA’s view of

the Stafford Act singled out SHA as a not-for-profit organization to

be denied assistance.

At the time of the earthquake SHA enjoyed tax exempt status

under the Internal Revenue code. We were a candidate for membership in the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent

Schools, which accepts only schools which adhere to a non-discrimination policy, and SHA had received various forms of State and

Federal assistance. Excuse the pun, but we thought everything we

were doing was kosher.

Following the procedures set out in the Code of Federal Regulations, which may be more complex than many sections of the Talmud, SHA applied for disaster relief to FEMA in accordance with

the Stafford Act. Our application was denied on the basis that, as

a Jewish school and in accordance with the tenets of our religion,

we admitted only Jewish students. Incidentally, to our knowledge,

we have never received an application for admission from a student

not professing the Jewish faith as his or her religion. We appealed

based on the existing statutes and regulations.

In our appeal we demonstrated that FEMA had not correctly interpreted the Stafford Act and the regulations promulgated thereunder. We argued and proved that had FEMA correctly read the

statute, Presidential leadership would not have been needed in

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order to have qualified SHA for disaster relief from FEMA. We are

grateful to President Bush and the White House Office of FaithBased Initiatives for their direct involvement and intervention in

helping Seattle Hebrew Academy reverse FEMA’s decision. We

fully agree with the statement of then FEMA director, Joe

Albaugh, who stated, ‘‘Disasters don’t discriminate, and neither

should our response to them.’’

Before I close, let me add a happy postscript. Since President

Bush’s directive to FEMA not to discriminate, we have found

FEMA to be an excellent partner. We have not been burdened with

unneeded paperwork. Our conversations with them have been professional. FEMA’s financial assistance to Seattle Hebrew Academy

has been instrumental in our rebuilding efforts.

This sums up my remarks. I appreciate the opportunity to give

you a brief overview of our experiences, and thank you very much

for the opportunity to speak to you today.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Maislen follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. And batting cleanup on the first panel is Mary

Diggs-Hobson, executive director of the African Americans Reach

and Teach Ministry here in Seattle.

Ms. HOBSON. Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity

to present to you this morning in representing African Americans

Reach and Teach Health Ministry, which is a faith-based capacitybuilding nonprofit organization that was established to respond to

HIV/AIDS and other major health issues affecting people of African

descent.

AARTH, as it’s called for short, Ministry was established in September 2002, making us a fairly new organization, and we were established really to help bridge the gap in health disparities by providing health education and training capacity-building services to

churches, mosques, and other faith-based organizations that serve

people of African descent. AARTH promotes collaborative partnerships with churches, mosques, faith-and community-based organizations, health and social service providers, and government agencies, and in the packet I provided this morning there are examples

of the different partners and collaborations that we’re involved in.

Our mission is to help build capacity of churches and mosques

and faith-based institutions that serve people of African descent

through education, compassionate service, access to resources and

self-advocacy for better healthcare systems, and our goal in all of

this are our three major goals: To increase healthcare awareness

and knowledge among people of African descent, promote responsible health choices and practices, to build the capacity of health

ministries and collaborations.

And we find that our reason really for, the motivation behind our

existence, and there are several motivating factors, but as reported

by the Kaiser Foundation, the CDC, and the Washington State

Health Department, disease, morbidity and mortality is staggering

in the African American communities across Washington State as

well as across America, and this is clearly evident when it comes

to HIV/AIDS, where African Americans represented 54 percent of

all of the new HIV/AIDS cases reported in 2002. Here in King

County African Americans represent 6 percent of the general population and 15 percent of all HIV/AIDS cases.

According to the May 2002 publication by the Washington State

Health Department the African American community remains underserved and undereducated about the diseases that affect them,

as demonstrated by the high numbers that African Americans experience across the board in major health issues.

To speak a little bit about the program strategies and services,

that we have implemented basically four strategies: Culturally relevant public educational trainings, where we develop and/or identify culturally relevant training. And our approach to this is really

to promote the train-the-trainer model because our goal is to increase the number of resources at the grassroots level. So train-thetrainer models around prevention and care curriculum where we

conduct classes, workshops, forums and conferences.

Another strategy is to support the technical support systems that

serve to strengthen and build infrastructure and skills within the

faith community.

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Advocacy, where we develop strategies, implement strategies for

engaging people of African descent in the legislative process to advocate for their healthcare needs, issues, resources, and funding at

all levels.

The fourth strategy is accessible resources, and that is to help us

facilitate referrals, linkages and connections to culturally relevant

appropriate social and healthcare resources, including traditional

and alternative care as well as on-line services.

In the packet you will also see a list of our major funders, which

include Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health. We

are on a subcontract with the University of Washington, and we

also receive funding from the National Network of Libraries of

Medicine to implement our various program services, which include—for education and training we provide HIV/AIDS training

for clergy, we assist churches in developing health ministries. We

are partnering with American Red Cross to provide HIV/AIDS prevention certification training for instructors.

We will be instituting several new courses later this year in the

fall, in working with the University of Washington, and one of

those courses will involve train-the-trainer sessions for the HIV/

AIDS rapid testing. We will certify individuals to be instructors or

certify individuals to conduct the testing, as well as circle of care

or pastoral care teams, and these are pastoral and hospice care

teams that work with individuals who are suffering from chronic

illnesses.

The other course that we’ll be working with with the University

of Washington is—we’re calling The Healthy Brown Bag Series,

where we will provide accredited clinical courses that will be

taught by individuals from the university and within the community to certify and provide credits for professional healthcare workers who are in the faith community in various churches.

The other service that we do also provide is on-line access to

healthcare information, which we have developed an Access to

Wellness Network, and this is where we work with churches to

equip them with the skills to access the internet, through training.

We provide Web site development support and also assistance in

helping them to develop health fairs and workshops and conferences.

And the benefits that we see that this is to the faith community

as well as the greater community is that we increase the number

of certified trainers that are in the community as well as in the

local churches, on-line resources to health information in the

church that’s accessible by congregations as well as the community

in which the church sits. We increase access to culturally relevant

and sensitive resources. The church becomes better equipped to

minister to the whole person, healthier and more informed congregations and communities, access to free local training and technical assistance and grant resources. The congregants become more

involved in practical ministry, and it’s an opportunity for us to

greater demonstrate the love and grace and compassion of God.

The challenges and barriers that we experience to delivery of

service is the same as any new startup nonprofit organization, and

that is in the area of capacity building and development for our

board of directors, our staff and infrastructure. And when it comes

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to lack of access to unrestricted funding is another area and challenge that we are experiencing.

So in your packet you will find some examples of the particular

trainings that we offer to the community and, in particular, to the

clergy and the faith community, and I might add that we also offer

the same services to other community-based organizations as well.

Thank you for the opportunity to present.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Diggs Hobson follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I’m going to do the questioning in kind of reverse

order. Let me see, you said you provided materials on the funding.

Is that in this packet?

Ms. HOBSON. It’s in the packet.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, let me just ask you a couple questions.

Ms. HOBSON. OK.

Mr. SOUDER. If I can understand kind of the basic structure, was

this started by a group of churches? Was this started by a group

of individuals?

Ms. HOBSON. This was started by a group of individuals, including myself and a retired physician, and we were both members of

the faith community, and the organization was started in September 2002. And one of the major factors motivating this organization

was the tremendous increase in the numbers for HIV/AIDS among

African Americans and the lack of knowledge within the community, especially within the faith community, the African American

faith community, about HIV/AIDS and the impact it is having

among the people.

Mr. SOUDER. And you said you provided the materials, but we’re

scrambling about. How much of that did you say came from the

Federal Government, how much from other funding sources?

Ms. HOBSON. OK. We are on subcontract with the University of

Washington, which receives funding from Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health, and that funding supports our education and training for prevention, early intervention and care, and

that represents about 60 percent of our budget.

Mr. SOUDER. And do you raise private contributions as well, or

foundations, or from the churches themselves?

Ms. HOBSON. That is our goal. We are working toward that. We

haven’t had a whole lot of success on that as of yet, but much of

our funding comes through grant sources, and the intention is to

diversify that, our funding stream. And we’re working on individual as well as corporate donors, and corporate donors including

churches and other faith organizations as well as secular.

Mr. SOUDER. You mentioned in the materials here that your ministry has trained seven individuals, and you mentioned people, Sudanese, Zimbabwean, Kenyan, and others. Do you have a fairly significant African immigrant community here, or is it mostly kind of

native to the area for the last extended period of time?

Ms. HOBSON. Cal can also speak to this, but there is a fairly

large African immigrant community here, and we’ve actually, we

have trained 24, or certified 24 prevention instructors,and among

those do include Sudanese, Kenyan, Zimbabwean individuals from

those immigrant communities as well.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Uomoto, do you have any idea what the population is?

Mr. UOMOTO. I don’t know the exact population in terms of the

African population here. They are becoming the larger—a growing

share of the refugee population here. In the city of Seattle, where

you sit, basically the last census showed about one in every 15 to

17 percent, so one in every six people or so, are foreign born. So

I don’t know if that helps or not.

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Mr. SOUDER. And is the bulk of that 6 percent of the population

is African American, a higher percentage Asian American; is that

what you’re saying.

Mr. UOMOTO. Yes.

Ms. HOBSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Which is different than a lot of cities. This is the

only city in which we’re doing a hearing where that would be true.

Ms. HOBSON. Yes. The African American population for King

County has actually decreased over the past decade.

Mr. SOUDER. And have you seen a fairly steady problem related

to HIV and AIDS, or has it been increasing.

Ms. HOBSON. The problem is that just as it’s reflected across the

country, that the numbers are increasing among African Americans, especially for women and for teens. And so that is another

reason for the effort to get the churches more involved, the religious organizations more involved. Because African Americans as

well as Africans are, I want to say, spiritually centered, and the

source of resources, place where people go to seek support is typically to the faith community, to their particular faith communities,

whether they be Muslim or Christian. And so we are putting forth

the effort to increase the capacity around HIV/AIDS among those

religious organizations so that they can better serve their congregations as well as service to the neighborhood where the church does

sit.

Mr. SOUDER. So you’re not a specifically Christian organization;

you would have all faiths included.

Ms. HOBSON. Our organization is a faith-based organization coming from a Christian perspective. I am an ordained minister myself,

but we believe that this disease does not discriminate based on

race, color, or economic status or any of those things. There’s no

boundary to HIV/AIDS, and so we incorporate other faiths outside

of just the Christian faith.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, one of the things we try to sort out, because

we have a wide variety of different types of groups, is that there

are many people who are Christian and Muslim who work at the

Welfare Department as well. The question is, is your mission statement specifically directed toward a defined faith? If it’s all-inclusive

then it really——

Ms. HOBSON. No. It’s all-inclusive of the faith, the faith of the

larger definition. So it’s not just Christian.

Mr. SOUDER. And what would be different in your hiring practices than a health organization that was directly government.

Ms. HOBSON. The difference would be because we are a faithbased organization, we, in terms of our hiring, we look at hiring

people of like mind, of like value, and of like beliefs.

Mr. SOUDER. So what would be some of those type of things? In

other words, in trying to sort through this, because these are the

fine lines we’re trying to sort through as we draft the laws, because

common profession of beliefs is one of the criteria, for example, in

Planned Parenthood; they don’t particularly want to hire somebody

who’s pro life. An NRA group doesn’t necessarily want somebody

who wants to ban guns on their staff. But what is the mission

statement? We also have restrictions on what can be done with

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proselytizing and how much you can have an overt statement of

faith.

So with direct government funds, I’m trying to sort through

whether it’s a works-oriented side then it’s really no different than

a government agency. Because presumably if you’re going to go to

work in juvenile justice or in healthcare for a government agency

you’re going to believe the statement of faith that you’re there in

the broad sense of the works, that you’re there to help somebody

who is hurting, or you shouldn’t be working for the government either.

Ms. HOBSON. Well, just to read our mission statement, our mission statement is that we are here to help build the capacity of

churches, mosques, and faith-based institutions that serve people of

African descent through education, compassionate service, and access to resources and self-advocacy for better healthcare systems.

And in that, as far as what we believe about that, is that in

terms of hiring people, we really embrace people that embrace love

for others, compassion for others, and who believe in God.

Mr. SOUDER. So would you hire an atheist?

Ms. HOBSON. No.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the things we’re trying to sort through, because in the delivery system we pretty much have agreement

among those who even oppose the Faith-Based Initiative that government funds can be used to train in the sense of what you’re trying to do is to train people or to tap people inside the churches.

Then there will be questions as to what can be funded with the

people who have been trained, and how much that has to come

from private foundation and how much that has to come from government, whether it’s a separate organization or part of the church

directly. And I was trying to sort through, because you have a

slightly different organizational structure, heavily dependent at

this point on government grants, but you’re working with the

churches as a delivery system. Do you get volunteers then in those

churches then to implement the program, or how does that work?

Ms. HOBSON. We do have volunteers, and our approach is the

train-the-trainer model to certify individuals to be trained, those

individuals become volunteers to the organization as well as, you

know, available to their congregations.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, I thank you for your work because I’m from

Northeast Indiana, and in my hometown of Fort Wayne, which has

a population of about 250,000, and the African American population’s about 12 percent. And we’ve been involved in the minority

health fairs there. Similar problems, not necessarily as much HIV/

AIDS, but all sorts of minority health things. A ranking member

of this subcommittee, Elijah Cummings, heads the Black Caucus,

and one of the things we’ve held a number of hearings on in addition to the justice system is in the health area and trying to look

at minority healthcare, so I appreciate your coming today and adding that testimony here to this part of the debate.

Now, I think I’ll just go this way through. Mr. Neary, thank you

for coming today, and in addition to talking in general about your

school, and a little bit about the case that we had heard about.

We’re looking at this as we wrap up and prepare our report and

recommendations on faith-based, and where things might go next.

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And when I first heard about the court decision on Locke vs. Davey

I became very concerned about what this means next. I wanted to

clarify a couple of matters. And if you don’t know the answer to

this question we’ll followup. I want to make sure you followup in

detail.

The Washington Promise scholarship, could you describe what

that program is? Are you very familiar with it?

Mr. NEARY. Sure. The Washington Promise scholarship was instituted by Governor Locke specifically to provide grants to students who both demonstrated high ability and high need. So it was

a relatively small grant, I mean, in the grand scheme of things—

I think I do have this written down. The grant this year was for

$1,860 per year, and in order to qualify a student needed to demonstrate academic ability, grade point average, and test scores and

such, as well as a significant amount of financial need. So in Josh’s

case he qualified in both cases and was awarded the Promise scholarship.

Mr. SOUDER. $1,860. What would that compare to a year’s cost?

Mr. NEARY. Well, in our case the average student paying total

tuition, room and board, a residential student would be paying

about $20,000 a year. So less than 10 percent.

Mr. SOUDER. And do you know whether there are any Federal

funds mixed in this? Does this have anything to do with GEARUP?

Mr. NEARY. It does not. This is a Washington State——

Mr. SOUDER. Straight?

Mr. NEARY. Straight.

Mr. SOUDER. Are you 100 percent confident of that?

Mr. NEARY. No. Double-check that.

Mr. SOUDER. We’ll check, because in Indiana we have a variation

that they’ve named after Indiana that actually has GEAR-UP dollars, and what I want to know is if this has GEAR-UP dollars in

it, which are targeted for kids with promise, very similar name in

different States, but if that’s got Federal dollars in it they have a

different precedent here in what precedent they set. If they’re State

dollars, then you get into a State-Federal relationship, which is a

slightly different variation.

Have you looked at or have you studied the actual Court ruling

much at this point? I think we’re having testimony at some point,

or we’re going to get from some Washington experts who take the

decision apart in particular.

Mr. NEARY. Sure.

Mr. SOUDER. But do you believe or have you heard anybody who

talked with you about whether this could threaten students who

are taking theology courses as part of a nursing scholarship? For

example, if they take a theology course, none of the grant money

could be applied to that?

Mr. NEARY. Yeah, that’s part of our concern right now. In our

case, I mean, each of our 1,200 students have Bible and theology

courses embedded into their program. In the case of a nursing student, for example, it would be 16 units, so it’s not a huge part of

the program, but it’s certainly part of the program and it’s part of

the thread of the institution. For example, we require our students

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to attend chapel service three times a week. So there are specific

faith-based curricular and co-curricular components of the program.

There hasn’t been any indication so far that in our case Washington State-funded financial aid is up for grabs for these students.

The specifics of the case were along the lines of vocational preparation for ministry. So I don’t think that students outside of our

school of ministry and our organization are in danger yet, but we’re

concerned.

Mr. SOUDER. Yeah, it’s unclear to me what the differentiation is

between taking a theology course and being a theology student. Do

you train any chaplains?

Mr. NEARY. We do. Typically chaplaincy requires a master’s degree. So the students in our course of study, we don’t have a graduate theology program, so typically to qualify for chaplaincy they’d

be moving on to seminary, for example, to receive a master’s degree.

Mr. SOUDER. In your opinion, would this court ruling say that

Washington funds could not be used for chaplaincy.

Mr. NEARY. Oh, certainly.

Mr. SOUDER. We’re going to probably pursue this more in the

next Congress because this is potentially a huge change. You said

you understand that 30 States have similar language?

Mr. NEARY. Yeah, the catch-phrase is these Blaine amendments.

As I understand it, the Blaine amendments were really put into

State constitutions, and you can see them, if you were to look at

a map with the States that have Blaine amendments or Blaine

amendment-like language in their constitutions, it’s all the western

States. As State constitutions were being put into place these

Blaine amendments were showing up, and as I understand it, it

was really a move in fear of the Catholic church using State money

to train clergy. So I understand the problem, or I understand the

motivation behind all of it, I suppose, but as I understand it, there

are about 30 States that have this sort of Blaine amendment language. In many of those States, it’s the same kind of language

that’s in the Washington State Constitution.

Mr. SOUDER. The big concern here is the slippery slope, which of

course is occurring in every other category. There’s no reason to believe it won’t occur here, although this may be very interesting to

sort through whether this is mostly a State’s rights ruling or a religious-based ruling. It also may give us some clues as to the whole

faith-based program, which is, by the way, going to be court tested.

But it’s decisions like this that give us a hint of where the court’s

going.

Mr. NEARY. In my reading of the ruling it was cast very much

in the State’s rights vein.

Mr. SOUDER. Did Kennedy or O’Connor make any major statements on the ruling?

Mr. NEARY. No.

Mr. SOUDER. They’re the two that are undecided.

It’s absolutely clear in areas like nursing, that we have these

huge shortages around the country. I’ve said this at a number of

hearings, but really the first faith-based funding efforts in the

United States outside of the International World Relief area were

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with HIV/AIDS, because the only people who initially in the early

1980’s would apply for any HUD grants were Christians.

Mr. NEARY. Sure.

Mr. SOUDER. Because other people thought if they caught AIDS

they would die, and they would catch it. So the government wasn’t

asking questions whether it was a faith-based organization, whether they were going to pray with the individual because, quite frankly, nobody else would do it. It is a similar situation with homeless.

Mr. NEARY. Modern day lepers, essentially.

Mr. SOUDER. Yeah. And when you start to expand into categories

which have led into drug treatment, then you’re now against competition that wants the same clientele. Or when you deal with a

poverty program or other programs where there are existing organizations that want to do it or are providing the services, that’s

where we’ve really gotten into the faith-based argument. And now

it’s going backward the other direction into things that historically

hadn’t been impacted.

But nursing is one of the huge shortages in the United States

and all over the world, and if we don’t keep faith-based organizations involved, where people come in because of their motivation,

it’s unclear how we’re going to serve the people who have health

problems in the United States.

Mr. NEARY. As I try to look into the crystal ball, that’s my big

concern, the idea of competition for funds. Down the road, as States

begin to shrink budgets, my fear is that the faith-based education

institutions, in our case, will be the first ones on the chopping

block as they’re trying to figure out what to do with smaller pools

of money.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. It’s not too hard to see how this doesn’t go from

grant to loan, so it’s just starting to happen with some tax matters.

Mr. Uomoto. Did I say that correctly? Close?

Mr. UOMOTO. Close.

Mr. SOUDER. I apologize. I’m used to being called ‘‘Suder,’’ not

Souder, so it happens more than not.

Your organization is part of World Relief International, is that

correct?

Mr. UOMOTO. That’s correct.

Mr. SOUDER. And most of those efforts are targeted outside the

United States. How much is inside the United States?

Mr. UOMOTO. The agency has both an international component

and a domestic component. I belong to the domestic side.

Mr. SOUDER. And how much would you say of World Relief is domestic side? 20 percent? Roughly.

Mr. UOMOTO. No, it’s a larger percentage, I believe. I believe it’s

something like 60 percent.

Mr. SOUDER. So it’s more domestic-oriented than it is international?

Mr. UOMOTO. But you can—right. That’s one thing I will have to

check.

Mr. SOUDER. Will you get that information to us?

Mr. UOMOTO. Yes. That will be easier.

Mr. SOUDER. And you said you’ve been doing this for how long

in Seattle?

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Mr. UOMOTO. I’ve been in Seattle with World Relief for 15 years,

since 1989.

Mr. SOUDER. And how long has Seattle had a World Relief organization.

Mr. UOMOTO. Since 1979.

Mr. SOUDER. And you said there has always been some government funding involved in the organization?

Mr. UOMOTO. Yes. From the very beginning, the entire Department of State Refugee Resettlement Program has been subcontracting with faith-based organizations. So there are about a dozen

what we call ‘‘volies,’’ or voluntary agencies, so World Relief is one,

Church World Service, Jewish Family Services, Catholic Community Services, Lutheran Refugee Program are all a part of the subcontractors.

Mr. SOUDER. In refugee resettlement, how many nonfaith-based

organizations are involved in refugee resettlement in this area?

Mr. UOMOTO. In this area there are, specifically by constitution,

I would say one, which would be International Rescue Committee.

They brought Einstein from Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.

Mr. SOUDER. So most of them are faith-based, is my understanding?

Mr. UOMOTO. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Because my impression in my hometown area, we

have very, very large relief organizations, and have had a huge and

diverse influx of immigrant populations. Almost all that is done is

done by Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Social Services, Mennonite Relief, large faith-based organizations, and the government

actually contracts to those organizations because they don’t have

much staff or much language ability to deal with it if they wouldn’t

work with the faith-based organizations. If suddenly the faithbased organizations were pulled out, what would happen in Seattle?

Mr. UOMOTO. Well, like I said, in Seattle there’s really only one

nonsectarian organization, International Rescue Committee. Just to

give you a comparison, in terms of the actual numbers of persons

we resettle, World Relief is the largest in the State by far. Our organization probably resettles this year maybe 900. This is a low

year for us. I would say IRC resettles probably 350 or 400 in a

year. We can get those figures to you very easily if you’re interested.

Mr. SOUDER. So if you did roughly 900 resettlements, if you can

provide some of that data to us. But for discussion purposes, because the number doesn’t really matter as much, because I’m trying to get ballpark range. But I would like to have the actual numbers for the record. How much of the cost of that resettlement is

paid by the Federal Government and how much through foundations, private donations, etc.? Two-thirds to one-third?

Mr. UOMOTO. Of the actual resettlement?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

Mr. UOMOTO. Of the actual resettlement, probably upwards of 90

percent, 93 percent.

Mr. SOUDER. Is funded by the government?

Mr. UOMOTO. Funded by the government.

Mr. SOUDER. So an individual——

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Mr. UOMOTO. That does include also direct grants to the refugees

themselves that are pass-throughs.

Mr. SOUDER. I don’t think we’ve had any testimony on refugee

resettlement on any of our hearings yet, so I want to ask a couple

of basic questions. If somebody’s coming in from Laos, can you kind

of walk through the process? What are the costs involved in a refugee’s resettlement in that type of case? There’s the paperwork processing prior; usually they’re somewhere in a refugee camp overseas.

So all the paperwork has to be processed in terms of flight arrangements, finding a sponsor here on this side, etc. Once they come

here, we have the responsibility from the time they get off the

plane and put them with someone to live with, arrange for food,

clothing, everything, and then permanent housing, and eventually

we need to link them to social services here, the social security,

health screening, English As a Second Language programs, etc.

And down the road, immigration services, and 5 years down the

road naturalization. So that would be the basic path.

Mr. SOUDER. So in the costs related to this Laotian immigrant,

a lot of what you just said was staffing cost for World Relief.

Mr. UOMOTO. Yes, that’s correct.

Mr. SOUDER. And of your dollars for your staffing cost, how much

of that comes from the Federal Government?

Mr. UOMOTO. Oh, I would say probably 90 percent or greater.

Mr. SOUDER. So 90 percent of World Relief’s dollars in Seattle

are Federal grants to you?

Mr. UOMOTO. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. To implement?

And then when you place the individuals in housing do they get

Federal dollars for that housing, or are you privately placing them

through a church, or how are you doing it?

Mr. UOMOTO. No. OK, this does become a little bit complicated

because when I am saying over 90 percent, it’s true, because that’s

our basic—the way we understand our finances, but we say public,

which includes State and Federal. Now, in this State the Federal

Government gives funds, block grant funds, to Department of Social & Health Services, who then would pay—they don’t pay for the

refugees’ rent, but they give them a certain grant amount depending on the size of the family. So yes, I guess that would also be

Federal, though it comes from the State. So that portion comes

from the Federal Government also. Food stamps, medical, that type

of thing.

Mr. SOUDER. That’s the connection to social services.

Mr. UOMOTO. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have specific churches you work with to

place people in homes or in jobs, or dp are you predominantly work

with the refugee, to get them here.

Mr. UOMOTO. Well, on any given day, like right now, we would

have probably a dozen churches we’re working with. But just to

give you some sense of interaction, the first year I was at World

Relief I had spoken to 50 churches, meaning, please help, please

sponsor, please host a refugee family. We don’t do that much anymore because the population has shifted, but we interact quite a

bit with churches. They are volunteers, they are interns, etc., they

are host families.

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Mr. SOUDER. Because if 90 percent of your dollars are coming

from the Federal Government and then you’re connecting to the social service agency, what is the reason that the government

wouldn’t have their own agency to do this? What are you saving

the government by being a private organization?

Mr. UOMOTO. In the beginning of refugee resettlement, after the

Southeast Asian War, the government did do this through the military; they took everybody on aircraft carriers, took them to camp

Pendleton, trained them for civilian service, and found they didn’t

do such a great job of it. So they turned around and contracted

with the different private national agencies, of which World Relief

is one. And so far, as far as I understand it, in terms of the outcomes mandated by the government, they’ve been very satisfied.

We have a list of outcomes that we’re required to produce in

terms of did they get temporary housing, did they get permanent

housing, did they get a social service number, did they get linked

to the Department of Social and Health Services, did they get a

grant, how much did they get? So we have to produce reports back

to the Department of State, and it’s the same for all the voluntary

agencies in this program.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me ask about a couple of cases that you referred to. On the prayer with the family that was coming in, would

the pastor have prayed with them if they hadn’t asked for a prayer?

Mr. UOMOTO. No. He probably wouldn’t even have gone to the

airport, since he turned out to be a friend of the family. The family

requested that he go with them to the airport, etc.

Mr. SOUDER. But basically you don’t do any preaching or praying

unless an individual asks? And you also said he wasn’t a staffer?

Mr. UOMOTO. He wasn’t a staffer at this time, no. He was at

some point staff of World Relief, but not at this time.

Mr. SOUDER. Is there anything that you do that would be classified as proselytizing?

Mr. UOMOTO. No.

Mr. SOUDER. So the main concern you would have would be hiring practices.

Mr. UOMOTO. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Because it’s clear, by the way, that you can’t proselytize with government dollars.

Mr. UOMOTO. We understand that.

Mr. SOUDER. But many Christian organizations don’t, and it’s ultimately going to become a big stumbling block in many of the

grants administration has given, and in the course they’re going to

eventually rule that if you’re going to have a prayer you’re going

to have to separate. Now, what’s interesting is if an individual asks

for it and you provide diversity of prayer, in other words, if’s a Jewish individual, a Muslim individual or Buddhist individual, that

they have access to that. Otherwise probably that could be arranged separately from the refugee activities and they could say,

‘‘Look, why don’t we do this later?’’

I mean, it doesn’t necessarily have to be part of providing the

food, but that is a tough concept we’re working through. If it’s a

voucher, then there’s more flexibility. If it’s a direct grant, that’s

why I was trying to sort through your funding procedure. If the inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:25 Mar 10, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00117 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98603.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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dividual gets a voucher, then they can take it to a faith-based organization that might have prayer with a meal, but if it’s the only

provider in the area, or the dominant provider, then we’re on different kinds of rules.

We may have some qualifying, additional questions with that,

but your organization is unusual here because of the evolution of

your interrelationship with the Federal Government.

Do you have anything else you want to add?

Mr. UOMOTO. Perhaps the exploration of the role of the faith

community. In other words, we provide all our services to all refugees. We’ve had, you know, Somali Muslims, Iraqi Muslims, Burmese, Buddhists, etc. We provide them with all the same services.

In terms of our staffing, though, we do try to recruit staffing for

people who match our vision statement, and to have a faith component in terms of service that is a motivating factor for staff work.

We also work with a large number of church-based groups in

terms of volunteers, so they volunteer with us. We have volunteer

coordinators, etc. So that’s where mainly the faith community

comes in, in terms of the multiplication of Federal dollars, the services that they provide. We see that the number of dollars that the

government gives us to do actually the work that we’re mandated

to do is very tight.

So in terms of extra friendships, extracurricular friendships, gifts

in kind given to the refugee families, for instance, I had a family

at my house a week ago. They just moved out. They’re from Armenia, came through Moscow, a family of four. They moved basically

to an empty apartment. A church basically furnished it, couches,

tables, chairs, etc. So all that gift in kind is really the multiplier

factor that we bring to the Federal Government.

Mr. SOUDER. And that’s what would be helpful to have a little

bit more of a sense of how much that is. If 90 percent of the basic

costs come from the Federal Government, I’m trying to figure out

how much of the leveraging that is. One argument could be, ‘‘Oh,

well, why doesn’t the Federal Government just do this if they’re

providing the 90 percent? What are we getting out of it? Would

some people not take the pay level that you’re offering? Would they

not do the extracurricular with it? Would they not line up the

churches to give the furniture? What exactly is the added value?’’

Because the argument here is, if you’re not leveraging funds then

you can make a pretty fair secular argument that it isn’t worth, not

from my point of view, but from some, that it isn’t worth the dollars. So thank you. If you can provide a little bit more of that information.

Mr. Maislen, you said very openly in your testimony that we may

need to go to written questions, but let me see if I understand some

of the basics so we can elaborate. It was a little confusing to me,

is this a school from preschool to eighth grade? Is that the thrust

of it?

Mr. MAISLEN. That’s correct.

Mr. SOUDER. And it is to teach Orthodox or beyond Orthodox? Is

the teaching itself at the school? Would it be considered an Orthodox school?

Mr. MAISLEN. It is considered an Orthodox school, yes.

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Mr. SOUDER. But you said you would have people from all backgrounds from the Jewish community, but they know their kids

would be going to an Orthodox school.

Mr. MAISLEN. That is correct.

Mr. SOUDER. And when you say you have teachers who aren’t Orthodox, would they presumably be teaching nonreligious courses?

Mr. MAISLEN. That is also correct, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Because you would have, say, a math teacher

wouldn’t necessarily be——

Mr. MAISLEN. Right. A math teacher doesn’t have to be a rabbi,

for example.

Mr. SOUDER. So that’s an interesting distinction as we work

through. Would you say that, in other types of courses, is a fairly

standard position for Orthodox schools, or would most Orthodox

schools want all their staff at the school to be Orthodox?

Mr. MAISLEN. No, I think that’s a pretty standard position. If

you’re splitting to secular and then your religious studies, let’s say,

you’d want the religious component to be taught by people that you

feel would be strongest in that area. So for us, we would want to

have a rabbi teaching the Torah, whereas in math or in general social studies it can be pretty much anybody that’s certified.

Mr. SOUDER. See, that’s a little bit different than very conservative Christian organizations or even very conservative Muslim organizations, who view the faith spreading wholistically through

each of the studies and wouldn’t necessarily have that distinction,

which is an interesting question then when they come to deprive

you of a grant on your school on FEMA.

Now, you’re saying that when the President did his directive,

which is an executive order, not a law, right? So unless we codify

this in law—is there any effort to codify this?

Ms. MEYER. [Inaudible.]

Mr. SOUDER. Yes, but we don’t have a law?

Ms. MEYER. Not a law from Congress, no.

Mr. SOUDER. Because if it’s an executive order it doesn’t have to

be binding to the next administration, because the next administration can just come in with a pen and change the regulation. So we

need to look at a permanent change as opposed to a temporary

change that requires overturning in the House and the Senate.

Mr. MAISLEN. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. And post the executive order, then what happened?

Once the president changed that, were you one of many, or the primary one that called attention to this change? Do you know?

Mr. MAISLEN. I don’t understand the question.

Mr. SOUDER. In other words, when the President did his directive

on September 12th, my understanding from your testimony is after

that point your grant went forward and you’re basically going to be

able to get back into your school.

Mr. MAISLEN. That’s correct. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And were you a primary reason they did the directive, or one of a number?

Mr. MAISLEN. The Seattle Hebrew Academy?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

Mr. MAISLEN. I think we were primary, yes.

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Mr. SOUDER. So you were very aware that when they signed that

on December 12th or December 13th you were probably aware of

that, or was it something you read about 3 months later? I was trying to sort out whether you were the watershed to finalizing the

thing.

Mr. MAISLEN. Yes, I believe that we were.

Mr. SOUDER. And prior to that point, did you know, they ruled

you were a faith-based organization and therefore ineligible? Or a

nonprofit? I was a little confused when you said are nonprofits not

eligible for FEMA?

Mr. MAISLEN. That I’m not so sure about. We’re classified as nonprofit.

Mr. SOUDER. Because I understood in your testimony that you

implied that you weren’t sure whether you were deprived because

you were nonprofit.

Mr. MAISLEN. I’m not exactly certain of the exact wording of the

Stafford Act, which was what I believe the original denial was

based on. It said FEMA’s view of the Stafford Act singled out SHA

as a not for profit, to be denied assistance. So I think that was the

wording in that act.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. Well, we’ll get a little bit of a clarification. In

today’s hearing we’ve got a number of what I would term legislatively developing things. Most of what we’ve focused on around the

country are more or less the traditional hiring practice questions,

inter-relationships at the different types of—should you have

501(c)3’s, should you go directly through the church.

Today what’s real unusual about this hearing is we have a number of different ideas of where this is heading. We have a couple

of organizations that are mostly governments, yours is mostly government, or high percent government funded, working through

churches. World Relief is a historic Christian organization, but

heavily government funded, but then leverages the dollars through

churches and an international arena. We have a case over here of

the theology case, which is a brand new, very disturbing trend. The

California case, that they weren’t able to be here, and a FEMA case

that’s kind of unusual.

So we wanted to get some of this into the record to say, OK, this

is going to be a lot broader than the way we normally just define

faith-based. I appreciate your testimony today because yours is a

different variation, even in your hiring practices and your mix and

your role, and yet you were still deprived.

Mr. MAISLEN. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. Which is an interesting challenge as we look at legislation. Well, thank you.

Mr. MAISLEN. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Is there anything else you’d like to add for the

record?

Mr. MAISLEN. No.

Mr. SOUDER. Ms. Esau, yours is very much at the core of the current debate, and I wanted to have some followup questions. I was

kind of baffled in one part here of your testimony. SAMHSA’s having you conduct trainings in drug abuse treatment?

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Ms. ESAU. Capacity-building techniques and best practices for organizations that provide substance abuse and mental health services.

Mr. SOUDER. Would you elaborate a little more?

Ms. ESAU. Sure. What has come to light, sort of across the country, through the whole Faith-Based Initiative is that many of the

programs that are doing exceptionally good work on the ground,

treating the symptoms, getting to the core root of these problems

of substance abuse, mental health problems, addiction, they’re awfully good at serving their clients and their folks, but they have

huge gaps in their infrastructure and in their business practices,

record keeping, evaluation methods. Most of these organizations

have very, very little funding. They have a high volume of volunteers that are doing things for them. There’s a lack of consistency

in their methods of operation.

And so SAMHSA has been fantastic at recognizing the need to

help these organizations come up to speed so they cannot only become more efficient with their services, but that they can expand

their services, be more effective by improving the way they do business every day. And so We Care Northwest and several other sort

of intermediary organizations around the country now have contracts through SAMHSA to help these organizations improve the

way they do their business.

Mr. SOUDER. So you’re not predominantly working with them on

how to do drug treatment; you’re working with them on how to

structure?

Ms. ESAU. SAMHSA recognizes that the organizations in the

church basements, the 12-step programs, those folks are the experts. So we let them do the job that they do best, but if we can,

help them develop their systems.

Mr. SOUDER. So are you teaching them how to do tracking, accountability for measurement and success stories, that type of

thing?

Ms. ESAU. Yes, plus fundraising, long-range planning, and volunteer management.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have a component that does accountability

measurement, how to do tracking of their cases?

Ms. ESAU. Yes, we do. In fact, I teach a 1-day seminar on evaluation, and we go through the exercise of developing a Logic Model.

Most of the small organizations have never even heard that term,

and yet most, certainly, Federal grants, State contracts, today almost all private RFPs ask for an evaluation tool. These folks don’t

have any idea what that is.

Mr. SOUDER. If there’s not, let me just make a statement here.

If there’s not a process of an evaluation tool, or if SAMHSA gives

grants to groups that don’t do that, they’ll probably lose the whole

program within 12 months.

So it’s very important when you’re out in the grassroots—we just

did a hearing a few weeks ago with Charlie Curry, who is a good

friend of mine and actually went to Huntington College in our district, his family’s from there, and he did a lot of this in Pennsylvania when Ridge was Governor, and now heads SAMHSA. And we

had him with NIH and ANAMA (phonetic), all the major groups in

Washington, and then a lot of the major researchers in the country,

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and I’m about to speak again to the national drug treatment people

at their national conference.

And what is absolutely clear is that unless the faith-based community gets a better tracking method, this is going to end real fast.

And that is one of the most important things to communicate, because it’s counter-intuitive to allow the people who are helping on

the street. In San Antonio we had Freddie Garcia with Victory Life

Scholarship, which is indisputably the most effective, as somebody

who’s worked this issue for 10 years, effective organization. But

they don’t do drug treatment. They would say, ‘‘We change people’s

hearts and they become Christians and they’re no longer on drugs.’’

But nobody can argue, including Texas, who tried to shut them

down at a couple points, that they aren’t the most successful team

in the country. They’re now down in Peru, in Central America, and

around. But it isn’t for everybody. That’s why you have to have a

voucher system, and it’s unclear how we work through that mix.

Pastor Rick Warren’s church, the Saddleback Church, the Purpose Driven Life people, have a huge program right now in Southern California that has a different mix. And as John Walters at

ONDCP works with the drug treatment people, how we do this is

going to depend upon the effectiveness of this, but there is no dispute that at least in certain cases there are dramatically different

results.

At the same time, it’s also true that if it isn’t tracked, bottom

line, we can’t defend giving money to one Federal group that will

require all this detail and all this paperwork, and then saying, except churches, and they don’t have to have these same standards,

they can go wander around, and if somebody feels good—we don’t

track them, and if a year later they’re back over in a Federal program, telling the Federal Government that this church didn’t followup, that isn’t going to work.

What it will amount to is they need to understand when they

touch taxpayers’ dollars there’s a different accountability. And

those of us who have advocated this flexibility aren’t going to tolerate it either.

We had a very good testimony in Charlotte, North Carolina,

where a long-time developer had worked with a number of organizations in foundation fundraising and in management. It’s the biggest rescue operation and turned to three other members of the

panelists who were working with different missions and said,

‘‘None of you should be head of your organization,’’ and particularly

two of them. He said, ‘‘You shouldn’t be head of your organization.

Your heart is to help the people. You need to get somebody to head

your organization who will do the legal work, who will do the fundraising and the management and the paperwork.’’ Too often we

take the people who have the heart to help, which is different than

the administrative skill, and that mixing is what is causing us so

many problems right now in faith-based.

So is that a lot what your intermediary organization is trying to

address?

Ms. ESAU. Precisely. And if I could draw your attention to my

handout. No. 9 on the list there, and I apologize that these sections

are not numbered, but No. 9 once you get there is numbered, it’s

all the way to the back.

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For the past couple of years what you were describing has been

coming to me on almost a daily basis. I receive phone calls from

folks not just in this State, but from all over the country, that say,

My church has a great basement organization. How can we take it

to the next level? How can we start making ourselves viable for

some kind of government partnerships?

This has come to me so often that about a year ago I started

writing the outlines for a book. This is an excerpt from my book

that will be released in November of this year. It’s published by

Josey-Bass, and it addresses exactly what you were talking about,

how to bridge that gap between the feel-good heart service that we,

again, are called to administer, and yet separate out the very important business practices that need to be present in order for

those programs to be successful. There isn’t a tool like this that exists. There are some excellent resources that have been published

by the Hudson Institute, and Dr. Amy Sherman is sort of the leader. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her name.

Mr. SOUDER. Yeah, she was at a hearing in March.

Ms. ESAU. Yeah, she’s really the guru. Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies

has also been here in Seattle three times, in fact, right in this very

building, to conduct a seminar for us where I invited State and

county government officials to come in and join with faith-based

leadership to discuss how we can blend our strengths. Cal was

there, and several other people in this room were at the first one.

That was 2 years ago now.

And SAMHSA sponsored another one of those trainings here in

March, which I hosted for them at the Seattle Center, and we had

more than 200 folks attend that. That was strictly grant writing.

It was a 2-day seminar on grant writing, and we brought in a tremendous expert in the field, and he gave folks a lot of tools and

tips to take away, a lot of good examples of what a successful grant

proposal looks like, what not to do. The trainings have been very,

very successful and very well attended.

And it’s only through those trainings and the relationships that

we’re building on the grassroots level that I think we’re going to

see some real successes that we can point to and say, OK, Congressmen, you know, these are the examples. This is the evidence.

These programs do work. They need a little help, they need some

training, they need to tighten things up a little bit, but they’re already doing the work.

And I’d like to also remind you, and maybe Amy Sherman spoke

to you about this when she testified, but in 1999 she conducted a

survey of 9 States and 204 or 205 faith-based organizations and researched the methods that they used for meeting the needs of the

poor in the communities, and she found only 2 cases where—out

of more than 200 organizations, 2 cases where an individual that

had been receiving service from a faith-based organization had requested to be moved to a secular organization.

And that, of course, was one of the fears early on at the Federal

level, was, well, if we assign clients to faith-based organizations,

you know, we’re going to run up against this proselytization,

these—the indoctrination, you know, the prayer that is so scary to

so many people. In more than 200 organizations doing service over

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a year’s time, there were only two individuals that asked to be

moved.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the things that the Democrat ranking member of this subcommittee, Mr. Cummings, has given me lots of flexibility to do at these hearings, even when there’s not a member

present, and it’s because I’ve tried to be real honest and fair, and

I need to point out just for the record that’s somewhat disputed.

In other words, Amy is our best researcher from the perspective

that I come from, but I can tell you that is factually probably not

correct. In the studies that she did that may be the case, but I

know in my own home area of several who have switched, even in

some of the programs that I’m intimately familiar with, some people just don’t like the faith component and they switch over.

She’s our best researcher, but we need a lot more data, because

we have very minimal data on our side compared to massive data,

particularly people who are defending their current grant size, and

that’s why we need to have that pressure. I felt compelled to point

that out. Otherwise I’m going to have objections that this is too

one-sided.

Ms. ESAU. I see. I was only referring to her one study.

Mr. SOUDER. And I believe that she is starting to build a body

of research that we can start to compete with, her research is not

necessarily undisputed. Although I still think it’s very good and

argue on her behalf, so don’t misstate what I just said.

What I was baffled about is you said your attorney general’s office in Washington State isn’t participating in the Faith-Based Initiative. In a program like SAMHSA they don’t have an opt-out provision, do they?

Ms. ESAU. No.

Mr. SOUDER. So what’s happening with that? In other words, if

it’s Federal dollars they can restrict State dollars, but they can’t restrict Federal dollars.

Ms. ESAU. That’s the argument that I have raised on a number

of occasions. I don’t get a whole lot of cooperation or callbacks when

I raise that issue.

Mr. SOUDER. I think most programs do blend through, and that’s

what makes it difficult.

Ms. ESAU. You’re right.

Mr. SOUDER. If you can keep us posted on this variable, because

this could become a major stumbling block as they move into the

drug treatment area. And we may have to make it clear in the

clause in the law that says you do not have—in other words, we

fought a Civil War over preemption. States do not have a right to

preempt Federal law. We are having this battle with so-called medicinal marijuana right now, that this is a very fundamental point

that we had over slavery. States cannot say, ‘‘We nullify a Federal

law.’’ There is nothing in the constitution that allows that.

Now, if it’s flexible in the law then a State may be able to do

that. We may need to look at the law and see if in the past did

we give that decision to the local State, in which case then we have

to have the debate on the Federal level whether we want to allow

this to happen.

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You alluded to a couple of other things, but let me make a couple

of comments and then see how you react to this, because you clearly are working with a wide variety of major programs.

I don’t believe we’re going to be able to sustain the hiring practice clause. And I’m not sure how the Court’s going to rule. We will

not be able to pass most—I must pick my words carefully here.

I carried the House version of the first welfare reform faithbased, and then all the bills since then until the Faith-Based Initiative, when J.C. Watts took the Republican lead on it and then

Roy Blunt. But we have been moving these bills for now probably

close to 6 years. Our support has declined each time. The last time,

on the president’s Faith-Based Initiative, I had introduced basically

Congressman Mark Green of Wisconsin—I had to go shopping on

the floor to say we were going to study a local waiver if there was

a sexual orientation ordinance like was referred to by Mr. Uomoto.

And the president did not have the votes to pass the initiative,

even in the house. So we had to do that to say we were going to

stay at the conference committee, so basically killed the bill.

Because without that waiver many faith-based—I mean, you can

do it now. If you don’t have any unique statement of faith that impacts your hiring practices of what you do, you’re currently eligible.

In other words, if you don’t have practices of faith you can get the

government funds now. So there’s no point to have a law when

groups have been getting these funds for years if there’s not a

uniqueness.

Now, in World Relief efforts they hadn’t had the same enforcement that they had on the domestic side, and they didn’t have the

homeless and AIDS. So we’re seeing an evolution. But I believe

that we’re pretty much, from the legislative branch, dead. I mean,

it’s not even close.

So the administrative branch and the executive branch decided

to implement it through executive order, because it didn’t really

matter which way you started because it’s going in the courts. And

you heard me allude to Kennedy and O’Connor, because they’re undecided. I believe they’re going to rule against much of what we’ve

passed, and that they’re going to define it tighter. So we’ve been

working to define this more tightly.

So I want to encourage you, as you’re working with the different

groups, to be very careful how you set this up, and don’t give them

false promises. My personal opinion is, I’ve watched as many

groups got involved with the Federal Government, and I’ve kind of

moderately switched sides on some of this because I’m afraid the

groups are going to be sucked into the government, the government’s going to change our laws, and that what I think we should

have been focused on is the tax credit side, and the tax deduction

side, but I do believe there are going to be training dollars. We already have worked this out with many of the critics of the program, that there are going to be training dollars.

But what we need to look for, and as you work this through,

given that I think the administration is committed to trying to expand some of the dollars, but warn your groups of the following:

If they take Federal dollars it probably isn’t going to hold, and

they’re going to have to look at hiring practice changes long-term,

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so be careful about getting the Federal dollars unless they’re willing to make the changes.

Second, set up firewalls from the church to the 501(c)3’s and

other groups, and also separate parts that are clearly overtly part

of the mission versus secondary. We’re going to get into these theology discussions. Is it pure theology, is it a theology course, can

they set it up like his school? Because we can probably sustain

FEMA legislation if they have a separation clearly in a school between theology and non-theology. For some evangelical colleges

that will be impossible, or probably Muslim colleges that would be

impossible, or schools, but in some areas we can do that. So depending on the type of group, they just need to know what’s coming.

But one of the things we need to look for is how to better hook

with foundations and how to fight this through with foundations as

well, because there are lots of dollars, there’s more there than

there is in the Federal Government. But I wanted to give a warning to be careful with the dollars because I don’t think we’re going

to—I think right now, from the conservative faith-based perspective

we’ve been advancing the cause, but I think we’re starting to pivot.

We’re going to be playing defense on some of the things we already

have, like student loans and buses. We’re trying to figure out some

areas where we can expand, but we’re going to be playing more defense because of the nature that there is some kind of false optimism out at the grassroots about where this is headed. But I’m

telling you, as somebody who had to do the vote counting on the

floor, that even in the Republican house we weren’t close, which

means that it’s not likely to get more that direction long term.

Do you have any comments on that?

Ms. ESAU. Well, I appreciate your being honest and candid with

us, and that’s probably the most up-to-date information that any of

us have, but I would like you to give us your best guess on vouchers, because as I understand it through HHS, vouchers will allow

the client to choose their service provider, and then there would be

none of this nonsense. Is that true or not?

Mr. SOUDER. In working through this, we are still working in a

bipartisan way, which has now gotten so caught up in the Presidential race, probably nothing much is going to happen until after

the next election. And it’s winner take all, but even then it’s, like,

going to be so closely divided in the country that we’ll have minimal dramatic changes to the supplemental. But should the leadership in the country change then the whole issue’s dead, bottom

line.

That as a practical matter, we had worked through a compromise

that said that if there were choices, if the constituent had a choice

of services, then a voucher could be allowed, but if there wasn’t a

choice it ought to be dropped. I believe, in my reading, contrary to

what some people in the administration are saying, that’s the way

the Court’s going to rule. So if there are several people who provide

job training in the area, several people who provide drug treatment

in the area, why couldn’t an individual have a voucher to choose?

But to really move to a rural area, and there’s only one drug treatment program in 200 miles, you are not going to be able to sustain

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in the Court that the only program there is faith-based, with any

religious content. You’re just not going to do that.

So I knocked it out of the first administration’s faith-based bill,

although we have it back in Head Start, and that is that Head

Start programs, which are mostly faith-based groups—basically

Title VII—that have religious rights of hiring and other things,

aren’t going to be able to get that in rural areas. I use this example

all the time in my hometown of Fort Wayne. One of the biggest

apartment complexes in this one section of town, it’s half right now

Burmese and half Bosnian, and if we had the nutritionsite or the

Head Start site be a faith-based organization reflective of the community, it would either be Muslim or Buddhist, but in that area

are a good 30 to 40 percent Christians. How would they feel if for

their grandmother or mom to go to the nutritionsite or to send

their kid to the Head Start site, if it was Muslim or Buddhist? That

we’re so used to Christianity in the faith-based community, most

of them are Christian, and so used to being the majority, that there

was not a thought about what happens.

In Seattle there’s been a little more thought to that in some sections, but that shows you why there has to be firewalls and why

there has to be choice. So I believe vouchers will be allowed in

some programs. Welfare reform is our test. We’re trying to move

the reauthorization through, and there are choices in most areas,

in job training, in different things. Drug treatment, I think we can

move it. When it comes to Head Start, nutritionsite things, things

where people aren’t as mobile and won’t go a large number of

miles, in wide rural areas, I believe you’re going to see much more

limited applications in future laws, and the Court will definitely

rule that direction.

So we’re winning. There have been two recent voucher decisions

narrowly defined that give flexibility. Here’s the layman’s way to

say it. If you’re paying for the computer, that’s nonsectarian. If

you’re paying for the software, that’s proselytizing.

Ms. ESAU. Sure.

Mr. SOUDER. So if you’re paying for a building, it’s similar to

what we do, quite frankly, in Planned Parenthood. We can’t fund

through the Federal Government abortion services, but if Planned

Parenthood has a building and on one side they have counseling for

birth control that isn’t abortion and another side abortion, and it’s

the same building, part of that rent can be paid, part of the facility,

but it can’t go directly to the contrary policy of the government on

abortion counseling. In other words, fungible money is there in all

kinds of things that we do.

And what the faith-based community needs to work through and

what your responsibilities are as intermediary organizations are to

figure out what those rules are in a revolving and increasingly

court changed market.

But I didn’t mean to get as much into that, but you all are at

the cutting edge of a lot of this, and your organization particularly

is one that’s working with the government.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Ms. ESAU. Yes, three other things. I also wanted to draw you attention to HB 1464, which is Item Nos. 4 and 5, actually, and 6,

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islative session and in the previous one. It failed both times. And

what that bill is, you’ll read—was designed to do was establish a

liaison for faith-based and community grassroots organizations in

each of the funding areas of our State social service agency, and

there are seven funding areas. And it had absolutely no fiscal implications. It would be taking an existing staff person and assigning them the duty of being the liaison for the community groups

and the faith-based groups who wanted to inquire about submitting

proposals to the agency. That failed twice because of the hiring

practices issue, which is very, very disappointing for us.

Also in the status of faith-based and community initiative in

Washington State, which is No. 3, the third common response is

that the order violates the anti-discrimination hiring practices.

That’s the most common response that we get when we try to appeal to any of our State agencies.

But No. 2 is also important, and that’s that our State constitution forbids us from issuing money to religious organizations, and

as you appropriately brought up, they don’t seem to see that by

commingling the Federal dollars that—the CDGB funds that come

to the State, they are actually violating the charitable choice laws.

But just try and get anyone in our State agencies to budge on that,

and they shut us down.

I was also informed that our State contracts department does

comply, in that they do send out the RFPs to whoever asks them,

but they are not obligated to look at them, to read them. In fact,

I was told by one of the lawyers in the contract department that

they very often, if it’s a new organization that they’ve never heard

of, they’ll just file it in the circular file because they’re not interested in developing new partnerships or new contracts with outside

organizations. They already have things working the way they like

it, and that’s the way that they’re going to remain. So that’s a

very—we’ve got such a bottleneck here in this State. I know some

States are a little more open, but this State has not been.

There are lots of statistics in Item 10, which talks about some

of the budget problems that we’ve had in this State. You can look

at that at your leisure. And then, well, that’s about all. I don’t

want to give you too much.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, thank you. One thing I would encourage you,

is to understand how different each of the States are and what the

constitutional historic restrictions are and the difficulties of working through that. In addition to whatever you can do to try to

change and follow through those laws, is to look at how they can

build and supplement within that. For example, if you had faithbased coordinators not whose primary responsibility was to put the

faith-based groups in competition, but look at how they might be

added to it, then you have an effect.

Because part of what happened in Indiana with 16 years of

Democratic Governors, who wouldn’t necessarily have been the first

to jump out on the faith-based, but in fact have—though I’m a Republican backing the opponent to the government—got an A+ in

faith-based in one of the three top spaces in faith-based initiatives.

And it’s because of budget pressures. We have a constitutional provision that says you can’t have a deficit, so every Governor is

scrambling to figure out, what am I doing with all these probation

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officers? They went from 60 kids to 600 kids. I don’t have enough

for mental health, I don’t have enough for prisons, I don’t know

what to do with this and that.

So they went to the faith-based community and said, you’ve got

to help us. Instead of looking at it as though they’re competing for

grants, then it’s how to leverage. But the fact is, the church mission isn’t just to try to get government funds. The church mission

is to try to help the people, and if you can get alongside them, that

may prove to be a more fruitful process than banging your head up

against a constitutional provision, which now the Supreme Court

has in effect upheld, at least as it applies to one category.

That suggests to me problems, as you’re moving ahead with saying we want part of the grant, because now you have a precedent,

one of the court cases, depending on how and where they do that,

but look at it as how you do the additive. Because the goal here

is to serve the poor and help the people who are hurting as part

of the works manifestation of faith as Christians, and we have to

figure out how to do this in different areas. And you have raised

some challenges here in Washington State that I haven’t seen.

If any of you want to submit anything else for the record or any

other comments you can. I first appreciate your willingness to come

today and your willingness to work in the area, and if you can express to the people who work with you on a daily basis that our

belief, and really this is a bipartisan belief, that without the different faith communities in this country I don’t know how we’d

meet the social needs of our Nation.

Thank you very much. We’ll take a brief recess here so that the

second panel can come forward.

[Recess.]

Mr. SOUDER. The subcommittee’s back in order. As you heard

earlier, we swear in all our witnesses.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

Thank you for your patience as I went through all my questions

in the first panel. Go ahead and sit down. Pastor Haskins needs

to sit down because I feel really small when you’re standing up.

I thank you all for coming. We’re going to start with Pastor Harvey Drake, executive director of the Emerald City Outreach Ministry. Is this your place we’re at here?

Mr. DRAKE. Yes, that’s true.

Mr. SOUDER. I look forward to hearing your testimony.

STATEMENTS OF HARVEY DRAKE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EMERALD CITY OUTREACH MINISTRY, SEATTLE, WA; PASTOR

GREGG ALEX, DIRECTOR, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE MATT

TALBOT CENTER, SEATTLE, WA; PASTOR DOUG WHEELER,

ZION PREPARATORY ACADEMY, SEATTLE, WA; AND PASTOR

AARON HASKINS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COALITION FOR

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND RENEWAL, SEATTLE, WA

Mr. DRAKE. OK. Thank you. First of all, thanks for the opportunity to be here to make our voices heard relative to the issue of

faith-based organizations and the provision of community services.

As stated, I am Harvey Drake, founder and president of Emerald

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City Outreach Ministries, and we are a non-profit community development corporation. I also serve as the senior pastor of Emerald

City Bible Fellowship, both of which are located right here in Seattle’s Rainier Valley.

We began ECOM, as we referred to it, in 1987, and our purpose

is very simple; it was to address issues plaguing families in the

core of our city. And thus our vision is a simple one, is to be a

model of what Christian community development is all about and

how it can be done at a given location, because one of the

uniquenesses of our organization is that we encourage people to

live in the community that we serve; if they are outside, to relocate

into the community and thus begin to address issues based on the

felt needs of this community, not on some perception that they had

from the outside.

Our vision is simple, and that’s building community one family

at a time. We believe that the best way to build community is to

build families, and so that’s what we try and do. Because no one

organization can effectively address the multiplicity of issues

plaguing families in the Rainier Valley, we have elected to focus

our attention on three primary areas: Education, leadership development and economic development.

The overriding value of that kind of governs what we do and who

we are, is one that we believe that development is better than rescue. There’s always a need to help people in times of crises, but we

believe that long-term, lasting, genuine change happens simply by

helping people develop their capacity and the skills that they need

to bring about change for themselves, not just doing things for

them. So that really helps us.

I’ve already mentioned that we are a grassroots organization and

we are community based. The focus for us became the entire family

a few years back, because in our early years we did a lot of work

with youth, but we realized that greater change happens when

moms and dads, and aunts and uncles, and grandmas and

grandpas change as well. And we don’t have time in this 5 minutes

that I have to illustrate why that’s important, but I will simply say

that I’ve had the privilege of working with young men, particularly

over the past 25 years, and what we’ve discovered is trying to help

them gain some new insight about living, about education, about

family, about fatherhood, etc., would in many cases be trumped by

what they saw at home, which was very different. And so it became

important to us, or obvious to us that it was necessary to really

begin to look at the entire family unit, so that’s how we go about

our work.

So with the time allotted, let me just simply kind of outline some

of the things that we’ve been engaged in in our brief 17-year history. If I were to take them one at a time in terms of education,

one of the things that we’ve always tried to do is to realize that

in this community, and it’s a proven fact based on statistics that

the Gates Foundation came up with and our local county of King

here, is that 48 percent of all African American young men that

enter the ninth grade don’t make it to twelfth grade graduation. 40

to 70 percent of Hispanics that enter that grade don’t make it.

And because of that troubling fact we have been committed to

supplemental education, and so we’ve done academic mentoring

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programs, others would call them tutoring programs, our entire existence. We’ve instituted, probably some 10 years ago, a summer

school project that is 6 weeks in length, and addresses students

who are scholars in grades K through eight, and we will probably

have—with the exception of this summer because of some budget

limitations, we have had in excess of 200 students in each of those

summers working on academics as well as being engaged in some

life enrichment projects.

Computer training has been a big part of what we’ve done as

well, realizing that there is still a pretty huge digital divide, regardless of what some of our local radio personalities want to purport. And so it has become incumbent upon us as an organization,

particularly focused on people of color, and specifically with the African American family, that we ensure that families have access to

technology.

In leadership we’ve employed a number of high school students,

starting with their sophomore year, to give them practical experience in terms of work, helping them to develop some good work

ethic, and we’ve also, in addition to paying them a weekly stipend,

given them the opportunity to earn college scholarships, although

we cannot pay for kids’ full tuition, but we have encouraged them

to move on to education, and have thus given them the opportunity

to earn money.

And so we’ve also had a staff person in the past, we don’t have

it currently, who focused solely on helping kids understand what

they needed to get in and out of high school, get college applications filed and prepared, to get also grants and financial aid in

order as well. Because we were committed to seeing that every

family in our neighborhood or community understand that secondary education is not an option, it’s a must. And so that’s where we

started. So we’ve been working with young people over that time.

There are a number of other things—does that red light mean

something? I didn’t get that explanation earlier.

Ms. MEYER. It shows the 5 minutes are up.

Mr. DRAKE. What?

Mr. SOUDER. But you can keep going.

Mr. DRAKE. But I can keep going.

Mr. SOUDER. We’ll be pretty flexible with it.

Mr. DRAKE. I have just begun. Of course, I’ll give you a copy of

all this so you can enter it into the record.

But just to say, in terms of leadership, what that looks like for

us in terms of the whole family is that there are kids that we’re

trying to help academically.

In terms of the parents, what we’re saying to parents is that

while you may not be able to go back to school full time, is there

something that you can do to improve your capacity? Maybe it’s

taking a class, maybe it’s going to a voc-tech school somewhere, do

something that encourages you, and then helping them to understand how valuable it is for them to be engaged in their own child’s

education. We are trying to help them realize that they are the

first level educator for their children, and that we always invite the

school system in to participate in that process, not in reverse.

In terms of economic development, if you were to take a drive

down this main thoroughfare, which is Rainier Avenue, you will

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discover that the development has begun in the north finally in the

last 5 years or so, they’ve started bringing some commerce in the

area, but the south end where we are now is the least developed

area. And so we believe as a faith-based organization that we must

help lead that development and that change, and so we work hard

with the community groups that exist, both faith-based and secular, to talk about ways that we can encourage businesses to come

in, but even more so, looking at ways that we can bring businesses

to this community as well by developing them in partnership with

others.

And there’s not an awful lot here for families to do outside of

some of the public park department activities, and so we want to

see that changed.

But the more important aspect of economic development from our

vantage point is that we really help families understand money:

How it works, how to make it, how to save it, how to grow it, and

that’s still a deficit in the lives of many families that we have opportunity to work with. And so we want to see that changed.

And one of the ideas that we have that’s on the table now—our

building is in the permitting stage—is to, when we build a new facility here, is to allow a number of families to become small investors in that property so that the nonprofit does not own everything

in and of itself, but rather that they give families an opportunity

to see how investing a small amount of money in a project could

be leveraged into more. Because the biggest factor that we are trying to address now is the transferrable wealth issue in America, because in some studies they will say that the income levels are getting closer between people of color and whites. Well, that’s debatable as well. But the biggest factor in determining what happens

futuristically is who has what to pass on to future generations. And

so from our vantage point it becomes incumbent upon us to look

for ways to really address that issue.

So I guess there’s more that could be said, but I think I’ll halt

there and let others have an opportunity to say something. I just

want to leave with this statement, and that is, myself along with

others here at this table and in this community are very committed

to seeing the church community and the faith-based community engaged in a way that adds value to what happens, and not subtracts

from that. And my biggest hope is that those in governmental

agencies will begin to see us as allies and not enemies, as they

have in the past. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Drake follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Next, Pastor Gregg Alex, executive director of the

Matt Talbot Center.

Pastor ALEX. Good morning, sir. My name is Gregg Alex, and I

am the Founder and the Director of the Matt Talbot Center.

We are a free comprehensive clinical State standard treatment

program in downtown Seattle, started 19 years ago. We’re in our

20th year. We’re totally private funded. We have been totally funded. We provide clinical services for going on 20 years with total private funding. We have just completed housing that was built with

State—with Federal tax credit, State housing trust funds, etc., but

a separate issue as such, but I’m speaking more in line with our

treatment program, and that’s part of it, that’s part of the comprehensive service we’re able to provide.

What our desire was, was to provide a seamless garment, a from

womb to tomb, from the time they walk in the door, treatment on

demand. In the clinical field it’s pretty well been established that

the real answer is one that is not either politically expedient or affordable, which is treatment on demand, to—instead of a 2, 4, 6

weeks pre-entry process for a person to get into treatment, where

we lose a lot of people who by definition of the disease cannot be

compliant, never make it to the point of receiving the service. And

when they walk in our door it’s free. It is immediate. The process

begins.

We utilize some other services, such as from the State, detox,

which we don’t run a clinical operation. We access detox. We also

try and equip other churches and organizations with what we’ve

learned in these now 19 years, and we just we put on an annual

addictions conference.

I sit on some committees and do some committee work for

SAMHSA in D.C., and am engaged in writing some of the handbooks with them on the trends. As you know, the personal physical

health costs of flying back and forth to the east coast to do this,

but we’re trying to spread that information and do some training

with other folks about this.

What we understood is that an addict, a homeless person, a person who has mental illness, these issues are so intricately bound

and wound together, woven together, that as part of the fabric of

addressing this dysfunction you’ve got to address all three levels of

that.

I also need to go on record and say that the very system that’s

asking us to now solve the problem was part of creating the problem, meaning the elimination of SROs, the thousands of units in

the city of Seattle, and mirrored throughout the country, low income housing that was privately owned, unsubsidized, it was eliminated to make way for condominiums, business developments in

downtown areas, literally eliminated, and created homelessness by

its development. The lack of adequate sufficient replacement for

that housing drove people to the streets, who at least had a place

to stay.

Then to self-medicate they began what had been perhaps a substance use and a substance abuse problem became a chemical dependency problem because they were self-medicating their depression, their homelessness, their inability to cope with living in shelters, which suddenly we were all in the business of. We saw the

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Federal Government fund excessively, not a solution, but a BandAid to homelessness, which was the shelters. And believe me,

there’s a need for it in this system, but the ultimate goal cannot

be people being warehoused for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. To sleep night

after night, and year after year, and in some cases even decade

after decade next to people who are mental—who are now beginning to be depressed secondary to the substance they use, if not

just the living conditions, or the circumstances that drove them to

the streets.

This is what we’re trying to deal with. There’s only one answer.

There’s only one answer to this, and I say this as a professional

opinion. I’m both a chemical dependency counselor—you know, this

isn’t just from theology study, but this is from—that demands that

we meet the need of a person. But the chemical dependency understanding makes it very clear to me that we’ve got to offer treatment on demand. Anything short of that is a Band-Aid.

Not only did we eliminate in this area, in this city, the SRO’s,

but we also eliminated numerous beds in treatment. We wiped out

over 200 beds in what’s known as Cedar Hills in this State, and

the tradeoffs become the issues of public safety. So now in the interest of public safety we cut budgets to enhance police services,

but we’ve created a greater need for police service on the local

streets because we’ve now not given people a place to go to get

well, when they’re interested in getting well.

You know, I’m sorry there’s not enough time to talk about this.

But this is what we’re faced with, this is what I see walk into my

door day after day. I have churches that refer people to us. We’re

trying to equip churches so they can do this work. In this community, right here in this building, I know that Pastor Drake has people that walk in all the time that are looking for help. They walk

in the doors of our churches.

In the African American community the church has been always

the source of the answer. People have trusted the church. They’ve

walked in, the families that have been hit with the devastation.

There’s been nothing we’ve ever seen that has hit this community

quite like crack cocaine when it hit the streets, and now we’re

starting to see a residual effect in the AIDS epidemic, which we

haven’t even begun to see the full face of yet. And yet we’re seeing

this on the streets. We’re not looking for Federal funds. We’ll continue to do what we do, at least as of now, our ministry downtown.

But if that funding is not increased so that those people can get

the help on demand, not through some system, when they’re clinically incapable of being compliant with appointments 2, 3, 4 weeks

out, when they don’t even have a place to lay their head, they don’t

have a way to keep record and track. They’re only trying to get the

pain that they’re suffering off of them. And we’re saying, enter the

system, come back in 2 weeks, we’ll make an appointment for you.

In 2 days they don’t know where they’re going to live. In 2 hours

they don’t know where their belongings are going to be kept. You

know, they’re subject to lose everything if they’re arrested and

picked up, and so whatever records they had about where they’re

supposed to be 2 weeks out, there’s just an innate incapacity to be

compliant with those things.

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The need is for response on demand. We have this with law enforcement because it’s a public safety issue. We have it with other

items in society because someone’s determined it’s that critical. 85

percent of the people incarcerated, they’re in pursuit of, are under

the use of, or secondary to engagement with some substance. Every

major dysfunction, whether it’s the issues around child abuse, divorce, sexual abuse, pornography, all these issues, you’ll find time

and time again that the percentage of people engaged are involved

with some substance, at least 50 percent or greater.

At some point we’ve got to wake up and say that if we really

want to diminish the dysfunction in our society we need to address

the issue of the substance that’s at the core of at least half of the

dysfunction identified as a means of people anesthetizing their conscience, their moral responsibility, and their ability to make the

right choice.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

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Mr. SOUDER. Next we have Pastor Doug Wheeler of Zion Preparatory Academy in Seattle.

Pastor WHEELER. Good afternoon. I basically just want to spend

a short time explaining something that I’ve learned through the

years as one of the founders of Zion Preparatory Academy, and that

is that we found that being a faith-based organization, we needed

to find creative ways for inclusion and exclusion, meaning finding

a community base of support of non-faith-based donors. That meant

that we had to set up a structure for Zion Prep to have them feel

welcome and comfortable enough to support a ministry in which we

wanted to educate children from the inner city. Zion Prep literally started with $13.64 in the bank, and we

weren’t too sure of that because it was a check that still had not

come through yet, so we really weren’t sure of that. We went down

to the Seattle Public School warehouse where they had a loading

dock, where they threw out computer paper and spiral notebooks

and textbooks that the binders were torn, and we climbed inside

the dumpsters and retrieved material to start our school. We started with six children, and we put them in uniforms.

The goal was to provide a choice for the inner city community, affordable choice. So we started our tuition at $35 per month. We

knew that was going to be a struggle, but we also knew that we

had to make it affordable to the single mom in an entry level job

or parent that says, I want a choice and I’m going to—I can afford

it.

Well, our school grew because we became very successful with

our children, because we had this one drive: If we taught character,

integrity, and values first, then we would educate the child. A lot

of educators looked at us and kind of laughed or said that wouldn’t

work, it’s all about test scores and your curriculum. And I said,

Yes, it is, but not until you have an individual that can receive

what we’re teaching.

So we made all our meals free, we provided door-to-door transportation, and we spent the first month, month and a half teaching

values, character, and integrity. And like we knew, kids started

learning. They published our test scores. People were amazed, and

then donors started calling us. And we knew then, how do we include the donor base that wants to support us and still stay faithbased?

Well, here’s what we did. We brought in the family, the leadership of the school, our strong Christian people who knew the vision. But our hiring practices, which I heard you talk about, was

to hire anybody that was willing to follow the Christian leadership.

That means to show kindness, lovingness, love, gentleness, longsuffering, patience, and the leadership that was Christian-based.

And when they said yes to that, we found that we found some incredible teachers that can function under that banner.

Our school grew from those six children to over 400. Our donor

base kept growing and growing because not only did they feel welcome, because we didn’t pound our faith in them, what we believed,

and are swinging our Bibles, but we began to show them that they

can believe in us, our ‘‘yea’’ was yea and our ‘‘nay’’ was nay, how

we loved our children, how the family began to look at that as a

center of the community to come and meet and talk and discuss.

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Politicians would come up and want to visit. We had people from

all over the country coming to see what we were doing. And out of that we ended up with a $10 million brand new facility on 7.3 acres that is paid for. And this was done by business

community leaders, including Starbucks and Costco and

Weyerhaeuser. All these people came together and said, ‘‘Listen, we

will build you a facility because we like what you’re doing, OK? It

will be in your name, but we’ll pay for it.’’ We have a $2.5 million endowment, and we have to raise—because we charge now $350 per month per family, we know they

can’t all afford it, so we need a scholarship, and we also need to

raise $1.2 million every year to make the budget work. We’ve been

in existence since 1982. By the grace of God we’ve made it each

year.

Zion Prep is a unique school because it looks for a way to include

everybody. That’s why any child that comes to that door, regardless

of background, why you’re at our door, whether you’re suspended,

kicked out, had issues at the public school, no matter what they

were, you are accepted if there’s a spot. No pretesting, nothing.

And because of that, that’s what made people say, ‘‘Hey, we can

support this type of ministry or school.’’

One of the other things that I did is I said, well, if—people

asked, ‘‘Well, can’t you duplicate what you’re doing?’’ Well, trying

to keep Zion afloat was not something I could duplicate all around,

but I began to counsel other people that wanted to start schools

and the other people who were running schools. And out of that we

came together early last year, and they said, Listen, we want to

start a district called ACUA, Association of Christian Urban Academies.

And these six schools came underneath ACUA to begin to replicate and to expand what we’re doing, in Spokane, Everett, Tacoma, and in Seattle. We’re also working with World Vision—partnership with World Vision, a partnership with community development and renewal, and with our partners here, who are all part of

that, learning centers.

Because we are finding that kids are being suspended and kicked

out and expelled for long periods of time, who need it less. They

need to be in school. So we decided to set up learning centers

where these kids can come and receive the education and the personal relationship, and still have that Christian-based foundation

that I talked about. So when they’re not in school they’re in a place

where their parent knows they’re getting nurtured, they’re being

challenged educationally and academically, and that we can measure and evaluate our success. That’s the key component.

Now, I was listening to you. One of the three things that I’ve

learned from some great businessmen who came around the school

is, one, get great leadership. Well, I have the vision, and I have a

dream, and I’m passionate about it, but I needed that business

component. So I hired the best director of finances and COO I could

afford, and I raised funds to afford even more to get the best, the

best development directors, and people to surround me to keep this

vision on a solid foundation.

I learned that audits are very important, so I do a full audit

every year to make sure everything is clear and in line and everyVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:25 Mar 10, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00152 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98603.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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one knows it. Because I want the credibility of the school to stand

with what we do with the ability of our children.

So through ACUA, Association of Christian Urban Academies,

and the learning centers, the faith-based community is making a

big stand, I believe, in Seattle and the State on education. And now

we’re sitting together in partnership looking in September to

launch the first inner city faith-based high school, with the same

drive of accepting the children that the schools say are the worst

ones. We literally are going to knock on the doors and say, give us

the children that are causing the biggest problem. We will pre-test

them and we will measure, and you’ll be able to see clearly,

through your standards, how successful we are with these kids.

And we hope to grow that to 200 students.

So in many ways I’m seeing that the faith-based community can

be very creative on keeping your faith-based, but providing services

to the overall community.

Charter schools are another issue on the table, so we have meetings being set up now to figure out how to take advantage of that.

And create an educational facility that can be a charter. But again,

figuring out creatively how the faith-based community can play a

role in that. So that’s the history of Zion Prep, ACUA, and the

learning centers.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

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Mr. SOUDER. And we’ll now close this panel with Pastor Aaron

Haskins, executive director of the Coalition for Community Development and Renewal in Seattle.

Pastor HASKINS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’m honored to speak with you. I must say in my comments that you have

just heard from three of the leaders in our urban community here

in Seattle. They are my heroes, and it’s a privilege to serve with

them.

I have been the Executive Director for the Coalition, as we like

to refer to ourselves, for now almost 7 years, and it’s been an honor

and a privilege.

Our goal is to mobilize and equip the church to bring wholeness

and transformation to the urban core of Seattle. The coalition started—and I might add that Pastor Gregg Alex and Pastor Doug

Wheeler here are the founders of the coalition—started in 1989

with a group of six African American pastors who came together

really to pray together and to support one another, and then found

in that they could do some things in their community.

Now, in 2004, the coalition has grown to over 123 churches and

organizations, and we service—our focus areas are in White Center, West Seattle, Renton and Kent, Central Seattle and Rainier

Valley. Our goal is really to simply come alongside the church, and

what we believe has already been stated today, that the urban

church is one of the greatest assets and most underutilized assets

within the urban core. Our goal and mandate is simply to come

alongside that church and strengthen her so that she can become

effective in the community.

We do this in several different ways. We’ve got three focus areas:

Of course, the church, the children, and then the community. I’ll

give you one example of some things that we’ve done. In this very

room—we meet twice a month, and the fourth Thursday is here in

this very room. And we’ll have a great diversity of pastors that will

come together to fellowship and to talk about different issues, and

also to pray and so forth. Of those hundred or so organizations you

have Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Church of God in

Christ, independent, small, large, Hispanic, Samoan, Asian, white,

black churches as well as you have suburban churches that also

come. And the fellowship time becomes a convenient place for us

to get together, to network, and to talk with one another about the

concerns that we are facing our community. Right where you’re

standing, on Thursday we had Mary Diggs come and talk to us

about the AIDS crisis, and many of the pastors then decided to join

her in that effort.

So the coalition has a set of values that we operate by, and of

core values that we operate by, but the purpose of the coalition is

to function as a catalyst, and that by functioning as a catalyst it

allows us to bring together parts that are functioning independently, begin to look at things in a corporate way. So ACUA, which

Pastor Wheeler referred to, is an initiative of the coalition.

Last month we had a CEO leaders workshop, where over 300

pastors convened and ministry leaders convened for practical leadership-based training that many of them had not been exposed to.

And so we function on capacity building as well.

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We had an initiative that we started a number of years ago

called Vision Youth. In the urban community upwards to 80 percent of the pastors are bivocational, and at this time we found out

that there were a number of pastors that did not have full-time

staff, did not have full-time youth outreach workers, and with all

the youth crime and issues that were going on, thought that it

would be good to come together. And it was actually Pastor Tony

Morris and a gentleman called J.D. Ward, who is now on our

board, and also a businessman, Jack McMillan, who is the former

CEO of Nordstrom, got together and formed what is now called Vision Youth, which simply provided $30,000 a year stipends to

churches to hire youth outreach workers, of which we would provide up to 800 hours a year of training for them to go out into the

community, spend 80 percent of their time in the community counseling, supporting and mentoring youth that are in some of the

most difficult areas.

Today we have over 15 churches that are receiving Vision Youth

grants here in Seattle. We have now partnered with World Vision,

and World Vision now has taken this program across the country

into nine different communities. And we are now providing the capacity building, the pastoral training, leadership development

training. We have hired a Ph.D. person in organizational development, Dr. Elaine Hayes. We have an administrator who is an MBA,

and our goal is to come alongside these churches and to provide

that leadership training that they need and capacity building that

they need.

I want to also say that we are also partnering with various suburban churches. We have found that—because we receive no Federal money at this time. It’s all privately funded. We have a staff

of about seven people that serve the pastors and the community.

And what we’ve found is, is that there are many, many resources

that exist within the church community, and so through building

effective partnerships we can leverage some of those resources. We

are currently under a collaborative fund-raising campaign that

would allow us to present to the faith community and family foundations and secular foundations a vision of raising nearly $14 million a year. We’re going to do that by—in getting church investment first.

So we are now currently in the process of identifying up to 10

suburban churches who will commit to $200,000 a year over 5

years, and getting that money, which will be $2 million, matched

by business and family foundations. And then we’re looking also to

go to the Federal Government based on what we’re doing there, to

leverage that money, so we would have the $14 million.

One of the things that we are seeing here in this community is

that without collaboration you’re not going to have the kind of effect and impact that you want. And what the coalition represents

is a collaborative group of individuals in churches and nonprofit organizations who have come together to complete one another and

not to compete with one another. And so the gentlemen that you’ve

just heard testimony from earlier have all made that commitment,

and we’re now replicating that in a deeper way.

So my last comment will be that I am also a board member of

We Care Northwest, with Ms. Jill Esau on that team, and associate

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pastor out at the City Church, which is one of the leading suburban churches in this community. And what we are trying to do is

simply, as Pastor Harvey said, to bring transformation, and we are

not interested in simply making the community better, but we

want to see the community changed, and we believe that a healthy

church, with healthy leaders, with healthy congregation, will help

in that effort. Thank you.

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

I think what I first want to do is clarify a couple things just related to a few of the ministries for the record. Then I’ve got a couple policy questions.

Let me first ask Pastor Alex of the Matt—it’s Gregg Alex——

Pastor ALEX. It’s Gregg Alex. It’s the Matt Talbot Center.

Mr. SOUDER. Now, it’s what.

Pastor ALEX. It’s the Matt Talbot Center.

Mr. SOUDER. The Matt Talbot Center. Now, are you a pastor?

Pastor ALEX. And the Matt Talbot Center is not a church. It’s a

drug and alcohol, clinical treatment center.

Mr. SOUDER. Yes, I understand.

Pastor ALEX. It’s a clinical treatment program, and we also have

50 units of housing built over the top of our facility.

Mr. SOUDER. You said you’ve not received government funding?

Pastor ALEX. No, no.

Mr. SOUDER. Did you for the housing?

Pastor ALEX. For the housing we did, yes. And through a

separate——

Mr. SOUDER. How many staff do you have?

Pastor ALEX. In the treatment program?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

Pastor ALEX. In the treatment program we’ve got eight staff, and

we’ve got a number of—we consider them staff, even though they’re

volunteers, we’ve got a retired mortgage banker or investment

banker who walked in 1 day and has been there for 2 years, teaches money classes.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you get foundation money? How do you——

Pastor ALEX. We’re totally private funded. We get grants, we

take donor designated, but not United Way grants, if you understand what I mean. We take donor designated grants. But through

individual donations, through fundraisers, we have an annual dinner, we have a golf tournament, but mostly writing letters and inviting people—our newsletter inviting people to be partners—not

just partners, investors.

Mr. SOUDER. Does your program have a Bible study component?

Pastor ALEX. We do. We do. And we have had—good question.

We have spiritual services. No one is required to take those to get

the treatment. It’s a 6-month treatment program. So they can opt

not to sit in that Bible study. We don’t require that of a person.

We’ve had people who have come in through our doors who have

been Buddhist, who have been atheist, who have been agnostic,

who have even been—one gentleman was a Satanist, openly

avowed, and didn’t want anything to do with what we were doing.

He wanted the treatment, though. It was free, it was on demand,

it was clinical State standard.

You know, people want what we have. Our reputation on the

streets is flawless because we treat people with dignity, we accept

them. We may not choose to accept some of their behaviors. And

they’re not required to sit in the spiritual services we hold. But we

find that most folks at some point want to know why we’re doing

what we do. But they’re not required, and it’s clearly stated as

such.

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I think like others here at this table will tell you, for a lot of the

foundations we go to, one of their stipulations, we’re clearly aware

of that, but we’re outcome-based, and they know that. Every member of the coalition, the programs that we run, what we’ve done is

held each other accountable over the years for what we all do. And

we’ve basically tried to encourage, you know, better accounting

practices, better accountability practices over the years, I don’t

know, it’s been some 10 years, 12 years that we’ve all been engaged

with one common purpose, and that’s excellence and excellent provision of excellent services for those that walk through our doors.

Mr. SOUDER. I’m sure you get a range of degrees of how messed

up an individual’s life is. Do you steer them toward a church? Do

you provide that yourself? How does it function? Let’s say that I’ve

been through a treatment program before, as many have, and I

come in at that point I really want to make a change in my life.

I don’t have a job. I don’t have a place to stay. I’ve been physically

abused, pick a couple things.

Pastor ALEX. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. Now what do you do.

Pastor ALEX. No. 1, we do a triage, front end. What’s your need,

what’s your most presenting problem? For most folks we encounter

they’re homeless because their addiction has driven them to the

streets, or the calls I’ll get from Doug or from Harvey or from any

of the others, they’ve got somebody who has had to leave their

home, or is on the streets, has walked in the church and needs a

place to stay. They need treatment, but you’ve got to stabilize their

living.

We’ve got collaborative relationships with the CRC, a transitional house, that we’re involved with but we also do such with

Union Gospel Mission’s inpatient program. If a person is so extreme that’s what they have to do, we oversee, run a shelter for

Emmanuel Lutheran Church, we operate their shelter for men, so

we’re able to provide quasi inpatient treatment on demand when

they walk in.

We work with the shelters to find out a couple of the missions

so we can at least find out their commitment. If you can stay here

for a week, and you can stay clean and sober for a week, and come

to treatment every day we’ll support you with whatever you need.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you do drug testing?

Pastor ALEX. Oh, yeah. Providence Hospital lab does our UA’s for

us. Because we do work for the drug courts. Even though we’re not

a State licensed program, we’re State standard, and so the drug

court and some of the superior court judges directly refer people to

us.

But we’ll end up with a, let’s say a mother who’s got children,

and we’ve had to have some of those kids go to the school, where

Doug is—we’ve had to get them in school, or we’ve referred them

to some services after they’re up the ladder for retraining, other

things here at ECOM. So we’ll work out collaboratively. Our job is

to not let that person walk out the door without knowing where

they’re going to get what they need, but treatment on demand. It

starts the moment they walk in the door. For many of them it’s to

go to detox first.

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Mr. SOUDER. Do you have a tracking of what’s happened to these

people long term?

Pastor ALEX. Yes, yes. Yeah. We followup with them. And many

of them, so many of our folks will complete, even though our intensive outpatient program is 6 months long, many of them will complete a year with us, so they’ll continue to do after care, so phase

three and phase four with us.

Mr. SOUDER. How long do you track?

Pastor ALEX. Well, we’ll track them usually up to about a year,

and many of them will continue to be engaged with us as such, but

a lot of them at that point we start to refer to other services. So

I track them in one way by walking up to Zion school, because

many of their kids are in that school.

Mr. SOUDER. Are you in close proximity?

Pastor WHEELER. Yeah, just a bus ride away.

Pastor ALEX. Yeah, it’s a bus ride. I mean, we’re logistically accessible to each other.

Then they’ll need some training. Well, then they’ll wind up here

with Pastor Drake, with Harvey Drake in Emerald City, you know,

with various groups, and we start to collaborate to make sure that

what we create is a seamless garment, so that from womb to tomb,

when they walk in the door until the time they finish.

You know, Doug was in graduation the other day for one of our

folks who we’ve worked with. He and his wife have closely worked

with that person, they’re in their church, you know, and we will

follow them through pastors. Because oftentimes a pastor will refer

someone. We don’t want to steal their sheep. We want them to go

back, we want them to stay connected to their family and that stable point in the community where they’re going to have continuing

care. So we in that sense refer them back to them, and they continue to do the care for them.

You know, our church as such is for street folks. So we’ve got

about 150 folks on Sunday morning, but most of them are off the

streets. And we serve breakfast to them, we talk to them about

their addiction. We give them what they need at that point. We

talk about, again, I’m a clinician, so we talk, my wife was a director of nursing at King County detox for almost 20 years. We have

a clinical approach to what we’re doing, but we also make sure

they understand it’s about making choices, you know, moral

choices. It’s not about good or bad because if that’s what it is, it’s

easy to choose the bad, but it’s about right or wrong.

And we follow them through chaplaincy, to jail, to Western State

Mental Hospital. So if they go into the prisons, they know, the biggest issue in all of this is it starts with us as a group, but it’s the

only thing that gets anybody out of their dysfunctions in society.

Pastor Drake will tell you about the people he works with because

he knows them. It’s about their families. It’s about relationship.

Relationship is about accountability, and accountability is about

goal setting and using your talents and making you accountable to

fulfill the word that you’ve said about what it is you’re supposed

to do with your life and your talents and your gifts.

Mr. SOUDER. Pastor Drake, first let me ask, are you part of the

Christian Community Development Association with Reverend

John Perkins.

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Mr. DRAKE. Yes, I am. That’s correct, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have any type of a CDC or economic development part of your mission, or are you looking at how to locate

jobs to put people in? I mean, a portion of this, is it actual community development?

Mr. DRAKE. Right. ECOM, Emerald City Outreach Ministries, is

a separate 501(c)3 organization. We started that actually before we

started the church that I currently serve. It’s through that entity,

the separate nonprofit entity, that we’ve had the job training and

small business development, and we do computer training and all

of our family services. We have a counseling center that we run in

partnership with Seattle Pacific University’s psychology department, so all of their doctoral candidates become clinicians for us

here through our counseling service that serves families.

So all the practical hands-on things that we are able to do are

done through the separate 501(c)3, and it’s a strategic decision because we realized the level that we wanted to operate on necessitated that we get funds from other sources besides our church.

And so we have a plethora of individuals and churches and foundations, and some small corporate donations to help us operate that

separate CDC, Community Development Corp.

Mr. SOUDER. Does the Small Business Administration or the minority business community work with you closely? We’ve got all

these microenterprise grants. Are you set up to try to help develop

capital in this area, and do they work with you as a faith-based organization smoothly, or how do you interact?

Mr. DRAKE. Well, up to this point we’ve not utilized any of those

services, principally because of what we would consider the inherent intrusion on the part of the government in terms of what we

want to do in terms of addressing the issues of character, integrity

and values as a part of what we do. So we’ve not done that. So everything we’ve done has been privately funded.

We’ve worked with a good cadre of businesses who understood

who we were, what we were about, and made referrals to us and

vice versa, but we’ve not had any involvement or support from the

SBA, minority business departments at all.

Mr. SOUDER. Working with the Federal Government can sometimes be like hugging a porcupine.

Mr. DRAKE. Oh, yeah.

Mr. SOUDER. And I appreciate your concerns. Interestingly, the

microenterprise-type loans are vouchers, and you would think that

would be something that when you see organizations like yours developing, because one of the problems, particularly with so many

African American males coming out of the prison system, it’s very

hard to find them jobs, as you talked about capital development in

minority areas and how the capital flows out. Even if your income

would start to catch up, you wouldn’t have the capital here.

So, we have been doing these type of minority loans for years,

but interestingly in Bangladesh, these are microenterprise mini

loans, because often when you’re starting a firm, you don’t need

$50,000 or $100,000 because you’re not starting at that level. You

might need $500, or $13.94, or was that 64 cents? The question is

how to get started in a new business. I’m fascinated with this concept of Christian community development and how to do it in a lot

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of the hard hit, abandoned brown field areas first, to get them up

and running. And then everybody will notice that we can get an old

company back that employs 1,500 people again, or 10,000 people.

Those days are probably going to be very difficult, but occasionally

you get lucky.

Mr. DRAKE. That’s right.

Mr. SOUDER. But the key thing is how to get somebody who

starts with two, basically your school story.

Mr. DRAKE. Sure.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. In the manufacturing end. Because ultimately if you don’t have the capital in the community you’re always going to just be a place they drain out of, and then people

who are left behind stay there.

Mr. DRAKE. Exactly right.

Mr. SOUDER. And often what’s fascinating to listen to, and one

of the things that’s different, is that in the African American community the church is often the last social institution left standing.

Mr. DRAKE. That’s right. That’s exactly right.

Mr. SOUDER. And how to build on that and how to work with

that was the original whole idea out of the faith-based.

Mr. DRAKE. That’s exactly right.

Mr. SOUDER. What Bob Woodson, my friend, used to call the zip

code test, that got sidetracked; is the money going in to those people who live in that zip code, and how can we reposition that and

target it for those who are highest risk?

Now, can you give me a little bit more of an idea then, what is

in this building we’re in today and what is the evolution of what

you’re doing here?

Mr. DRAKE. Well, the building that we’re in today basically is our

world headquarters. And basically most of what we did prior to this

building all happened outside, because we were moving from place

to place trying to find adequate facilities as we were trying to build

a funding base. We still as a value have most of what we do outside of this building.

For instance, our community learning center is operated out of

a public school just a mile and a half from us. Our before and after

school program was operating out of another school facility about

3 or 4 miles away from us. Our early childhood development center

operates in the new Holly, which is being redeveloped, which was

an old government housing project, which has been converted, and

most of the folks that used to be there are gone.

But yet, still in this particular building what you will find here

is we run a jobs program out of this, a small business development

component out of this, our technology center is housed here. The

college prep program that we did was operated out of this facility

as well. Then it housed all of the staff that we have. Well, we’re

down right now to about 16 full-time staff and about five part-time.

In the past we were up at around 35. So we’ve been trying to

weather this economic storm quite a bit. And then this building is

utilized by this community.

Mr. SOUDER. Is your building paid for?

Mr. DRAKE. The building is not paid for. This building is actually

owned and operated by the church, but we designed it with all of

our community development stuff in mind, which is why it doesn’t

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look necessarily like a church, per se. But we have a wide variety

of community meetings that happen here constantly. Today is an

example of what happens. Health fairs, technology fairs, you name

it, addiction conferences, you name it. It has become kind of a community asset, if you will.

Pastor HASKINS. Yes.

Mr. DRAKE. Which is why we are glad that we’re here. So we’re

still trying to get this puppy paid for, and there are other things

that we long to do, as I mentioned earlier, in an effort to lead some

of the change that needs to happen on the southern end of Rainier

Valley, that we are out and out trying to raise funds for.

Mr. SOUDER. I’m not sure who this is best directed to, whether

it’s Pastor Haskins or Pastor Drake or either of the others, but

have any of the churches here worked with homelessness? Probably

where the faith-based program has been most active for the longest

is in the homeless, but increasingly in HUD it was farther along

when they initiated this to make sure that in the high risk areas

where a lot of the public housing was, that it was done in conjunction with the churches doing it. Have you developed any housing

with any of the churches or in the shelters?

Pastor ALEX. You know, one of the first initiatives we had, I

think the one that probably forced us to go from being an organism

to an organization, formally structuring and incorporating, was the

development of housing. So we’ve developed housing. We’ve developed housing, affordable housing, to the point that the first few

houses we developed we literally gave to the folks.

Pastor HASKINS. That’s right.

Pastor ALEX. And we’re talking about homes that are worth probably about $250,000, but we gave them——

PASTOR HASKINS. Or more.

PASTOR ALEX. Or more, yeah. And we’ve developed, let’s see. We

had a three-acre site. That was our last major event at developing,

and our problem became there was we ended up with a community

and the city negotiating with us not to build more than the one test

house on it because they were—a lot of community issues going on,

you know, just—from greenbelt issues to the new public transportation that was going to go through the community.

And then some folks who directly did not want a faith-based

group developing housing in their neighborhood, simply because

they were afraid, following some of these various things that happened, that we were developing some cult, and they never looked

into what we had done. We literally gave the houses to people.

Sweat equity in the Habitat style of development. And our intention was simply to create housing.

You know, following that we moved our primary initiatives to the

youth work because, you know, once we realized that there was

going to be this political issue, we were not going to spend our time

hiring a lawyer and putting our money into that when we could be

putting that into children. So the housing issues are not done, but

they’re on the shelf at the moment because we have some more

pressing issues. So we did housing, I think about—I could stand

corrected, but about eight or—about eight units, and a couple of

multifamily buildings that we were involved with as well.

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Mr. DRAKE. Probably the powerful thing about what he just described is that it was done without any HUD money. It was all private donations that it was done. Aaron and I recently—and Doug,

actually, had a meeting with a HUD representative particularly

connected to kind of the Faith-Based Initiative stuff, to look into

what we could do to expand some of our goals of bringing affordable housing to this community. And we’re hoping that with the

changing tide and some of the practical things that we do that we’ll

be able to attract some of those dollars to make some things happen here because as we engage ourselves in some of the community

meetings—I think Dr. Hayes is still here, she can attest to this, is

that one of the No. 1 issues here is affordable housing.

A second issue is having a friendlier or better business environment here, getting new office space and businesses, etc. And so

we’re hoping that we can move to another level and begin to attract

some of the dollars that are available through those entities.

Pastor ALEX. Can I just add one other point? You know, our ministry, next to—in property, separate 501(c), we just built 50 units

of clean and sober housing, $61⁄2 million through, again, a separate

corporation to do such, but collaboratively working with the—it’s

part of what we do. And 50 units of housing, five floors, it’s called

Traugott Terrace in downtown Seattle. We also have the four units

of four-plex, which is transition, which houses eight people, which

is a transitional housing, clean and sober. That’s kind of where our

housing direction went in this interim period as we looked to it for

other ways to engage.

And we’re trying to equip other churches who own property with

this knowledge of how that system works, of trying to change a

mindset within churches and pastors who have small congregations, who don’t have the cash-flow capacity, who haven’t been perhaps as successful, seeing the measurable success, publicly acclaimed kind of success that I think many of the ministries involved in our core have, to show them how they can leverage that

property and begin to move into doing ministry with the homeless,

with the addicted, by creating housing on that land, but it’s going

to change their mindset.

In our community the church has really been the trustee of the

well-being historically, and that’s why to this day if the church is

not operating, and I think you’ve seen this in your travels throughout the country. If the church is not operating at a level, that community’s not operating at a level. I think the success or the recovery of the community within the black community is based often

on the engaging of the black church.

Mr. DRAKE. Just two practical things I want to mention in terms

of projects that are kind of on the drawing board. We have been

in dialog with a group called Covenant Retirement Communities,

which is based in Chicago, and have about 16 pretty swank retirement communities that they’ve developed throughout the country.

The nearest one to us is on Mercer Island, which is a pretty

upscale neighborhood. But we’ve been talking with them about

doing things that are tied to Medicare so that families in the lower

and the middle income areas would have decent housing to

progress to when they got to that age.

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And then a second thing that we’ve been working on is looking

into a transitional multiunit facility for women and children,

women particularly who are struggling with alcoholism as well.

And those are a couple things that are on the drawing board. So

that’s why we’re hoping that we can pursue this dialog with HUD

and a few others to try and get some resources to make this happen.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to ask this is on subject but a little different,

but I’ve got all of you here, it’s an opportunity to float something

out. One of the problems we have in housing is that a big subsector

is senior housing, which is often in the big high-rise housing, like

the Robert Taylor homes in Chicago, a lot of these things just being

terrorized by these thug gangs. And so you have the seniors who

want to have a safe place, safety is a big concern.

Mr. DRAKE. That’s right.

Mr. SOUDER. Then you have women and children in transitional

housing. You have homeless, where I appreciate your comment

that, you know, here’s a flophouse, how do we not have a person

get permanently into that? Then you referred to clean and sober,

in other words, we’re trying to get people who have a drug or alcohol problem, get them clean and sober, you do drug testing, you

kick them out if they misbehave.

One of the things that we’ve tried to do in some of the public

housing was, if we put a standard in, OK, we’re going to kick out

these drug dealers and people who are in gangs. Then the question

is, where do they go? Danny Davis, who is a member of this committee, Congressman Davis from Chicago, has a bill on prisoner

housing that I’m on. I’m the lead Republican sponsor.

But one of the dilemmas here is that if we put a standard that

you need to be clean and sober, or, say, not carrying a gun or terrorizing a person, or if you’ve been picked up two times in the last

week for terrorizing somebody you’re out of here, to make it so that

people stay there. What do we do with those people? I mean, is it

like a drunk and messy house? What do we do, because if you put

them on the street then you certainly aren’t going to help them.

Then, the displaced housing person, when you do kind of the

yuppie upgrading of communities that you’re talking about, on the

one hand you’re eliminating the crime in one sense, but you’ve

moved it.

What do you suggest we do with the people who won’t get clean

and sober, or who are in prison? Because they’ve been inside, at

least to some degree, and now they’re coming back out in the community, where do we put them, because there’s so much resistance

of where to go?

Could you define that problem, which to me seems to be one of

our core problems. It’s highlighted in young to 35-year-old black

males in particular.

Pastor WHEELER. I would just give one point a bit. The transitional houses that I’ve developed, and I have one that Gregg just

mentioned, it’s a four-plex, I have another four-plex, and basically

right now we haven’t even opened yet because we don’t have the

funds to do it, but we own the property. It’s for people who have

had the worst record. Now, sexual offenses and levels one and two,

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my insurance won’t do me justice there. But all the rest, I have a

guy that just got out of prison after 26 years for murder, OK?

Working with these young men, and working with these men

who are all African American, OK, I have certain rules. My key

rule that they understand is if you make a mistake, but want to

get up and clean off and move ahead, I’m still with you. One of the

criteria I also use is that you have a 30-day separation, OK? In

some cases you have 30 days, but you can get back in if you accomplish this, this, and this.

All people want to know, as far as the ones I’m working with,

is that if I make a mistake how do I correct it, and what do I have

to do to get back to where I need to go? When you say, That’s it,

you’re out, you’re gone, then that is a period, OK, and they start

a whole new paragraph over again. But if you put a comma after

what you do, they have this sense of hope. And I tell you, they stay

in contact with you. Sometimes it may take 2 months or 3 months,

but they come back because they know they can. And that’s the

way I operate our house. And sometimes people go like, man,

you’re just being used. That’s OK as long as they keep coming

back.

Mr. DRAKE. I think for me that’s the biggest disparity in the entire process, is that government tends to look at it more from a programmatic perspective versus a relational perspective. And the fact

that they keep moving, they keep trying to address issues that they

have dubbed ‘‘social,’’ which are really spiritual issues. And that’s

what we can’t quite figure out, and I’ll explain that a little better.

Because what we would say in those cases is that there’s a deeper need besides maybe the alcoholism or what caused them to offend, so let’s address that, whereas secular groups don’t do that,

they ignore that. So if they then don’t comply with what the rules

are, then they get the boot somewhere.

And so, when you talk about, what do you do with those individuals, for us, we would tend to say, how do we then begin to address

the deeper issue that caused the problem from the very beginning?

And I can sense that you probably identify with some of that. But

when you look at it from purely a secular vantage point, I think

that’s a really hard question to answer, because when you deal

with a negative element and you shift—and literally that’s all we’re

doing, is shifting them from one spot to the next spot. You say, so

what do you do?

If you want to make housing for seniors safe, clean and sober

housing for folks who are really trying to get it together, and you

have this problem element, what do you do with it? Well, that’s

worth a study in itself.

Pastor ALEX. I——

Mr. SOUDER. They go visit you?

Pastor ALEX. Well, they do, and they end up in my church for

a season, and hopefully I get them back where they belong.

But let me say this, that the gentlemen—we put on this annual

addiction conference. We had folks come up from the Bay Area for

the conference this last year, Oregon and the surrounding region.

We deem it the theo-therapeutic or the theo-clinical, where we

start to end this dualism and thought of the spiritual and the clinical, the moral and the clinical, that we never give up on anybody

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that walks into our doors. We give them some conditions by which

they have to stay in the door, OK? If they’re not ready yet, fine.

When you’re ready the door’s open to you. We never say no.

But it’s interesting that when you relapse in a private setting or

a government-supported treatment setting, for profit or a publicly

supported program, you’re put out. Well, you’ve just proven how

bad you need the treatment. I mean, I guess I have a real hard

time that people don’t understand that. They’re saying, Yeah, but

they blew it, they’re out. Well, no. That’s when you need to sit

down and restructure the program, because whatever you’re doing

for that person, one size does not fit all, because no one’s problem

is the same as someone else’s problem. But the loss, the cost of losing that person’s gift and talent is immeasurable. We have no idea

what we’ve lost.

And the fact that a father missing from the home is the common

denominator for most people that are incarcerated, and not—we

deal with men and women, but that we don’t realize that we’re now

affecting the next generation, and if we won’t invest in the restoration in this generation we can just prepare to build more prisons,

more treatment facilities, increase the number of treatment beds,

increase services and support for homelessness and mental illness.

Because what we did was the greatest prescription for seeing the

children end up being successful and outside of the welfare system

and all the related systems, is to see that father is in the home,

and to treat that father when he comes in not on an MPO basis,

not management by—did you meet this objective? No. Fine—or you

didn’t, you’re out, we’re done with you, we’ve succeeded.

Success isn’t measured that way. Success is measured by restoration, sustained recovery, and re-establishing solid relationships

that are going to hold people accountable. That’s why I say about

our treatment program, other ones I’ve talked to in the country,

others that I’ve had contact with, other ministries that sit around

this table, the reason these work is because we hold people accountable, which is what they want to do. I don’t believe that it’s

fair to the person to say to them, you know, or to a group of people

that they can’t do this. And so they’re not restorable.

From a theological standpoint for us that means we deny the

power of the resurrection. I can’t do that. That’s fundamentally

what I believe. It doesn’t mean that someone else has to believe

that, but I have to believe that to go to work here every day. And

so when I see people walk in our door I have to be absolutely convinced that this person walking in can be restored, and if I don’t

believe that then I might as well close my doors.

Pastor WHEELER. And if we didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be sitting here today.

Mr. DRAKE. That makes two of us.

Mr. SOUDER. There’s a huge challenge in your comment, and this

is the big debate in accountability, which every parent goes

through with their kids. If you don’t have firm standards of accountability is there ever a point where you cutoff, so that they understand that they can’t just keep coming back? At what point does

it become a hustle?

Pastor ALEX. Well, you hold them accountable, without question,

but you define for them the conditions. But they also have to have

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hope. Why should I stay clean and sober? To be unemployed? I

mean, it’s why we’re looking at the kids we’ve got in our community that know they can make money by selling some drugs, and

they have nothing, not even the hope of holding a job with any upward mobility at McDonald’s anymore because if you walk into

most McDonald’s you’ll see that immigrant populations have recognized an opportunity. So our kids are now not as hirable even in

those circumstances, and they’re saying, why should I stay clean

and sober? Why shouldn’t I be involved in drugs? We’ve got to create opportunities for them.

That’s why we figured together we could do more than we could

do alone, which is why we stand and support each other. And I believe that what happens here at ECOM and what happens at Zion

and what happens at these other places works because we can’t do

this by ourselves.

But they’ve got to know when you tell them, to stay clean and

sober, and they say, why? Why should I? Give me a reason. And

we can give them all the ethereal reasons, all the great academic

intellectual ones, but something tangible that relates to—we tell

folks, if the gospel we preach doesn’t change the condition of their

living, then what use is it? And that’s where the kids are at. Show

me why I shouldn’t go out and do this. Give me something tangible,

you know. Doesn’t work, I’m not going to do it. We’ve got to give

them another opportunity. We’ve got to show them and stick with

them until they find a job, show them that the family can be restored, that this will work.

Pastor WHEELER. I just want to say when he talks about the

family restored, one of the key things that I do when I bring my

men in is I look at the areas of child support, I look at the areas

of reconciling with their children, either by letter, by a card or by

a phone call, and if there’s an ex-wife, even a girlfriend that has

their child, make a phone call. I restore driver’s license.

And because unions are very liberal about hiring workers and laborers and ironworkers and so forth, I work with the unions, contractors. W.B. Clark is one, for example. And if my guy’s come in

and I’ve had him for a long enough period of time I then call them,

if they have openings they put them in trainings, they put them

in a job. And their check comes to me, and I manage their budgets

and how to do it, but the key thing is supporting your children.

When they hear that, when they send the first check there’s a

pride that comes, you see? There’s a feeling like, I’m making it all

right. When they write that letter, that little card, ‘‘I’m sorry,

please forgive me,’’ because they can’t make contact, those are the

kind of things that make a man feel like a man, and once you plant

that seed it’s very easy to water.

Mr. SOUDER. Anything else any of you want to add?

Pastor ALEX. If there’s a passion, if you sense a passion amongst

us, it’s one fueled by all of us believing in what we all see can be

done together, seeing the passion that each has for what they’re

doing, and the fact that virtually all of us started with nothing.

None of us in this group, and the rest of the core of the coalition,

really had anything when we started, and it was very easy for us

to trust each other because we knew we believed in what we were

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doing, and we didn’t have anything to do it with except what we

could come up with, and we never gave up.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you all pretty much live in the same neighborhoods.

Pastor WHEELER. We’ve been together since seventh grade, and

helped raise our kids together. And I’m recovered, 1980. There

wouldn’t be a Zion Prep if people like Gregg and people hadn’t

stuck with me and worked with me when I made my mistakes, and

hung with me, and 2 years after becoming clean and sober we

started a school. Those kind of things. That’s why I have a lot of

faith and belief in the men that come through that door because

I know how I came through and what they can do.

Mr. SOUDER. How much is your personal faith involved in this?

Mr. DRAKE. I think Mr. Alex said it appropriately, in that our

personal faith is what motivates us and drives us and gives us

hope. Each of us probably have a story, and I—acid, mescaline,

opium, hashish, heroin, the whole nine. Mom died at age 39 as a

heroin addict, two-time heroin addict. And my faith is what

brought me to a place to realize that there was something else in

life besides what I was engaged in, and because of the transformation that I experienced back in 1974, that I then translate

that to what can happen with people today, which is why I’m also

a firm believer that I don’t give up as easily.

Now, don’t misconstrue our desire to really welcome people, as

saying that we don’t hold people accountable. We can give you stories of folks we just had to say, enough is enough, this is the line,

you know, we’re done. But our faith gives us the capacity to hang

in there with people a little longer than most would want us to at

times. But it also shows us what can really happen. I mean, we’re

talking about change and transformation.

Pastor HASKINS. That’s right.

Mr. DRAKE. That’s why we believe in development and not just

rescuing people and helping people. We want to see people become

assets versus being a liability, and that’s critical to us, and it

comes out of our faith, it comes out of our desire, our own experience in seeing others radically transformed. It can happen, we

know it can happen, and we keep pushing for it, and so that’s how

my faith element impacts me.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, I appreciate all your passion.

Pastor HASKINS. Yes. I’ll just say this: That in all the debate on

faith-based issues and funding and that kind of thing, and proselytizing and that kind of thing, and so on and so forth, regardless

of what the Congress or you decide to do in terms of funding, there

is much work that is happening, you’ve just heard a portion of it

here, and will continue to happen. Do we need help? Absolutely.

But we don’t need help that will tie our hands and that will not

allow us to help people like they need to be helped.

Seattle is different than many other major metropolises that

you’re attending to and visiting, in that Seattle is very, very diverse. The African American community here is not the predominant ethnic group. You have many different nationalities here. And

I believe that’s why we believe that it can become a model for the

rest of the country. Because in many of the other cities, which I’ve

been a part of, Chicago and New York and Philly and so forth, the

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ethnic groups themselves don’t talk to one another. And that’s

where the coalition has come in to help facilitate that, and we’re

modeling that, believing, as has already been said, that we can do

more together than we can apart.

If the government is going to play a role in coming alongside

then it must understand and it must respect the church. It must

understand it and it must respect the church. And it should come

alongside it, not try to redefine it and try to neuter it, if you will.

Excuse me for being so direct there.

And there is much opportunity, and one of the things that I want

to enter into the record is many of these pastors and leaders, because all of these pastors and most of the coalition, the core, have

a church and they have their own separate 501(c)3, but many of

them have made bricks without straw. What they are doing, many

of the people on the outside of the community that look in and see

what they’re doing, could never do it. And they do that because of

their passion and their commitment to see the community changed.

And if the government is going to play a role and wants the

church to play a role more actively, then it will have to respect and

honor how the church does business. And one of the comments that

I heard earlier, in earlier testimony, was the issue of accountability. The church does not run from accountability. The coalition

doesn’t run from accountability. But we’re also looking at a system

that will allow us to do what we’ve been called to do the way that

we’ve been called to do it, with the accountability and the outcome.

And in this very room on May 15th we’ll have a faith-based conference, and we’re looking to collaborate and partner with different

ones. Someone from, let me see, the office here, is going to come

and speak to us, Theresa Chappelle, who is a political appointee of

faith-based liaison with the southeast region, she’ll be here. And

we’ll have that conference, and we’re trying to do those things.

But I can tell you, you asked the question, are there any churches that are partnering effectively in this region with the government? And the answer’s no. I mean, the answer is no. I know of

one organization that has received a sizable grant as an intermediary, and that would be Families Northwest, which is working

on the marriage component, which we are excited about. But there

are none. And the reason is because there is a concern that if we

get in partnership with the government that our hands will be tied

and we will not be able to serve the people the way that we need

to serve them.

This is the last thing that I will say. The answer to the urban

core resides within the urban core. These are, and they’re being

very humble in how they’re sharing with you today, but if you have

the time to go and see what they’re doing to change the lives of

people, what we’re doing to change the lives of people, it is very

courageous. It is absolutely amazing.

So if the government is going to play a part it must come in correct, recognizing that. And what we are finding is there are businesses, there are family foundations, there are corporations that

are understanding that.

On May 11th here in this city Doug Wheeler will be the keynote

speaker at a breakfast, of which most of the elected officials, business community, etc., will be at, and he will be speaking. Last year

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he was nominated as the Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst &

Young. And so these men have dedicated their lives, as have others, have dedicated their lives, and as the kids would say on the

street, they have the juice. The question will be, will the government respect them and then follow their lead? If they do that, I

think together there can be a partnership and change can happen.

If they don’t do that, then I think the government will be looking

on the outside, saying, Boy, aren’t you guys doing a great job.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, thank you. I’d like to make a couple of concluding comments. This is likely to be our last faith-based field

hearing. It has been really informative. Let me pick up on a couple

of things that you’ve said and put them into the record.

A little bit of how some of this process started. I’m old. I’m going

to be 54 shortly, and I’ve been in Congress since 1994, but I was

a staffer since 1985, with a break in there when I went back home

and then decided to run for Congress. But when I first went to

Washington I worked with the Children, Youth and Family Committee. That was a select committee, and I was Republican staff director under Dan Coats.

And when we looked at the problems of children, every week or

every couple weeks we did a hearing, and it just was overwhelming. Then I’d go home and go to a soccer game and I’d think, I wonder how many people here are beating their kids; I wonder how

many do this with their wife; I wonder how many, you know, have

a drug problem. Or when you drive on the road Saturday night you

think, man, half these people are whacked out. You don’t feel safe,

and you can become so depressed about what’s going on and say,

how do you tackle this? And do you know Bob Woodson with the

National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise.

Mr. DRAKE. Oh, yeah.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, he told me when I went to see him. He said,

‘‘Don’t be a typical white guy who sits on your duff and pronounces

what’s wrong. Go out and meet some of these people. In every community there’s a rose that’s blooming no matter what the state of

the problem is.’’ He said, ‘‘Go out there and meet them.’’ I said,

‘‘OK. You introduce me and I’ll go out.’’ So I used a lot of my breaks

to go out and visit.

And then Bob himself, and his son Rob worked for me, who was

unfortunately killed in an automobile wreck just a few years ago,

but that Bob was not particularly religious, or particularly Republican. He was actually more of a Socialist, a Democrat who thought

the Democrats abandoned him in the grassroots, and kind of got

used to working with some of us who were kind of these evangelical Republican types, and talked to us.

But one of the things that happened that was a big critical

standpoint that led to the first faith-based legislation in the late

1980’s and early 1990’s, was Bob had a conference, and he hauled

in a bunch of foundations and a bunch of Federal officials, at that

time under the Reagan administration. And Freddie Garcia, who I

mentioned from Victory Life Temple, was there. And he told how

he was a cocaine addict, and heroin, and how he met Jesus Christ

and how it changed his life. And now he formed this place, and had

all these people who were drug addicts.

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And I read his book, and I didn’t believe him. So I went down

and looked at it. I’ve been down three times. I keep thinking it’s

going to fall apart, you know, but it keeps growing, keeps spreading. And he said the key was changing people’s lives.

Then they moved over to Charles Ballard from Cleveland with

the National Fatherhood stuff, and he said he worked with 1,000

people, getting back with their families, much of what you talked

about. And then he said the only way it sticks is if they change

their personal life and make a commitment to Jesus Christ, they

change their life, and they go back to their families. Because unless

they change their life it’s tough to get it to stick because it will

come and go.

And about this time there were a couple of foundation guys sitting next to me, at that time I was a staffer, and they were sliding

under the table. Nobody’s supposed to be this overt about it.

And then I think, I’m blanking on his name. The guy who put

the treaty together for the Bloods and the Crips.

Mr. DRAKE. Rivers?

Mr. SOUDER. No, Eugene Rivers is in Boston. This guy’s from Los

Angeles. He’s a big heavy guy.

Mr. DRAKE. Rosie? Rosie Greer?

Mr. SOUDER. No, not Rosie Greer. This is a big heavy guy, not

as well known, but he’s actually the guy that negotiated any treaty

that’s ever been there. And he said, I’ve told my story about Quake,

and I’ve told my story about these guys to all the media. But the

truth was Quake became a Christian, and it changed his life, and

then he started to talk to the other guys.

And Bob Woodson, who hadn’t really heard this overt himself,

but was kind of introducing it to the foundations. Digger Phelps

was there from the, at that time, the Drug Control Policy Office

and Reagan administration and others. And he said that we’ve got

a problem here. Everybody we’re bringing in from the street is telling us this, and yet you guys don’t want them to talk about what’s

working on the street.

And that was the first kind of grappling with AIDS and homelessness. And as we moved we said, how can we tap into the people

who are living in the neighborhoods that are very faith-based, with

realizing that character change is part of then facilitating? Now,

it’s true, if you have character change and you don’t have housing

and you don’t have jobs and so on, I believe the most important

thing, by the way, personally, is eternal life, and that it’s not just

here, it’s the much longer after life. But that said, that part of faith

is works, and that we need to show that there is a reaction, and

we have an obligation as Christians to try to reach out and to try

to help people who are hurting, which is clearly the passion that

you all have. In addition to having been hurting and watched the

impact on your lives, you want to reach others that way.

But as we plunged into this, I was working for Dan Coats, who

did the Project for American Renewal. And the staffer that wrote

that, Mike Gerson, now the president’s chief speech writer, who at

that time was with Prison Fellowship that led to the Sugarland

Project in Texas, that helped get Governor Bush involved, and he

hired Mike Gerson to write this stuff.

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I am not convinced that this is going to work the way we thought

it was going to work, and that some of what we’re trying to work

through, you’ve heard some today, and we’re going to try to see

with this report, how far we can work together with the two sides.

Because on the Democratic side of my subcommittee there’s been

some concerns about this, but most of the Democratic members of

the subcommittee are minority, in the sense of African American

and Hispanic. On the Republican side we have another set of concerns because they’ve been mostly representing suburban and rural

areas, and they haven’t looked at urban problems as much.

And neither of them are overly enthusiastic about this project.

The Republicans are wondering whether the funds are going to go

into the Democratic areas, and the Democratics are concerned it’s

going to go to the faith-based groups rather than the secular organizations that are their anchor. And it’s kind of an odd thing we’re

trying to work through.

Now, in that mix, I believe that we can work out some of the

things that you’re working with. In other words, I believe that as

you set up degrees of parts of your organizations that don’t require

as much of a religious message, like you did with your housing,

which is one area we should be able to work with. If we can get

vouchers on narcotics, if we can try to figure out what do we do

inside the Prisons with Wings if it’s voluntary, with education, with

people coming out. Reentry programs are ones that we’re really

looking at, because this is a huge problem if we’re really going to

tackle crime long term, and drugs and alcohol, are the reentry programs and how we transition that. And the president raised that

in the State of Union, and that is one that looks like a very promising thing.

I think that another challenge is because, almost all the talk is

over in the more traditional social, moral areas that deal with families and abuse questions as opposed to the economic development

side. And that’s why I wanted to get that on the record today, because we need to be looking at how we can get more people educated, like your school, which takes the highest risk on demand, to

the degree you have an opening. This is to be commended beyond

any other school that plunges into the educational arena, period. If

you’re willing to take the hardest risk and then walk in there, and

you’ll work with them, you deserve the highest level of accommodation.

It is incredibly frustrating to many of us who favor faith-based,

but who can’t figure out how to get the dollars into organizations

like yours. That’s why the whole faith-based effort started. But as

I’ve watched this, you know what? If we put the dollars in, some

of it will kill your passion. You’ve said yourself that you don’t want

everything to become overly bureaucratic. You hire the people

around it, and you needed to supplement, but all of a sudden if you

get too big you’ve got this big monster. And it’s your passion, your

personal relationship, and it’s how we can develop other people

with that, how do you plant that, how do you interact with your

communities? And I don’t want to see the government kill the good

that’s there, yet it’s so frustrating to figure out how to get the resources there.

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How can we do this from the foundations? How can we get a system around the country? There’s at least two to three times as

much money in the private sector as there is in the public sector.

How do we alert them?

And what is the responsibility of the suburban churches where

the assets are? I was just in Fort Wayne, my hometown, where one

ministry provides food and housing to people just on demand, like

what you talked about, but he said, it isn’t a matter just of getting

the suburban churches to give to his ministry. Every one ought to

have their own. In addition to that, in other words, it isn’t, oh, we

gave a few dollars here to make us feel less guilty.

The question is, how do we get it integrated as a whole in the

philosophy of the Christian church, which is the majority of America, that they have responsibility toward those in their church, but

also in the areas that don’t have the assets, and how to match that

up? And to do that we need strong intermediary organizations, and

I’m not clear we need government, if we are all doing our side and

getting into the churches.

And then we can figure out where we match up with the government. And we’re trying to figure this out. Keith Phillips down in

Los Angeles gave us some new suggestions of how we can get

where there’s a military base, and use some of their equipment on

weekends to transport kids to youth camps? We do that internationally with some of the organizations. Can we do that? Are

there other things we can do at the edges, without direct funding

to the program, some cooperation with the faith-based?

If you have any thoughts of things where you can see government entities in your area that can match up and tap in, I want

to get those into the record. Because what we want to do is get a

laundry list and work through it, because with Bobby Scott and

some of the others who have been very resistant to the direct government funding, I think we can come up with some creative subparts that we can build on, and maybe not have the direct headon with where you’re able to get lots of direct funding, but supplementary things.

But I do want to make sure we explore this small business side

with the community development association, and try to figure out

how to work with that organization to do that. I’ve known and had

this tremendous respect for John Perkins for many years.

Pastor HASKINS. One of the things that we are looking at, there’s

several enterprise zones here in this area, and we need to look at

business incubators, we need to look at job training, we need to

look at all of those kind of things.

And I think the other role that the government can play is the

role of a convener. I totally agree with you in terms of the impact

of your intrusion on the church and that type of thing. I’ve often

made this statement, that there are more resources locked up within the churches, particularly within the broader church, than there

ever will be in the government. It doesn’t mean we don’t need government for certain things, because we do, but the government can

also be a facilitator in that. At this local level, We Care Northwest

is trying to play that role, to convene, but we need to also show

a picture, because let’s just be very clear about this, the urban

leaders of this community are in many cases making bricks without

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straw, and they’re doing the best that they can, and they need investment, period, OK?

It is a shame for Pastor Harvey Drake, who does all the things

that he does, Pastor Doug Wheeler, to do all the things that they

do, and change the people’s lives that they do, that every day they

have to worry about operations. It’s a shame, OK? Zion Prep Academy you have 300 kids plus, and he has to go every year and raise

that $1.3 million, and if he doesn’t raise it he’s got to stop serving

some of those kids. It’s a shame.

And I think part of the thing that I want to say on a very positive note is that the current administration has at least begun to

try to recognize the value of the faith community, which is wonderful. Now, I think you can also begin to talk to some of these conservative people that are aligned with you, that have said a lot of

different things, but they have been the Levite and the priest in

the story of the Good Samaritan. They’ve watched and described

the urban community’s calamities, but they themselves have not

engaged in it. And I think that the current administration can help

facilitate meetings and dialog with those that have, that are outside of the community, that go around the community, that talk

about all the issues, but don’t necessarily engage, and can help facilitate that. Now, here in Seattle we’ve already done some of that,

and we are very, very excited about that, but I think that’s one of

the roles that you can play.

The other thing is this: You have the role of what happens when

a person goes wrong, goes bad, the prison piece. Then there’s also

the other part of prevention. Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s do

some prevention to stop what’s happening so we’re not always reacting. And that’s why I’m very, very excited about what some of

the ministries and the coalition are doing on the prevention end,

not just at the end when they get in prison and get in trouble. Let’s

stop them before they get off the waterfall. And that’s where we

can understand the value of the urban church.

And understand this: I think it was John DiIulio who talked

about the assets of the urban church. But the urban church is not

like the suburban church. It is already a community development

outreach organization. It has to be that. The problem is that it is

still anemic. How can you build a thriving church in the Rainier

Beach community, which is just south of here, and you have an average family household income of $19,000 a year? It’s almost impossible to do that.

So what can the government do? Government can recognize the

church, and government can begin to facilitate those resources that

are currently outside of the community to partner with us as we

begin to change our own community. So a preventative strategy is

also necessary, not just on the other end. We spend a lot of time

with people that have fallen off the waterfall, but we need to go

all the way back up to the front before they fall off, and that’s

where the education piece fits, these learning centers, etc.

Let me say this to you: What would happen if next to every

school, because in some close proximity there is a church next to

these schools, and what if you had these learning centers that Pastor Doug Wheeler talked about in all of these schools? Let’s say in

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cent. They say that 15 percent of the kids are responsible for 60

percent of the problems. What if the church stood up and said, OK,

we want those kids. We’re going to put them in a learning center.

We’ll take care of them. I think you can see some change. We can

do it, but we’ve got to do things out of the box.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank you all for your testimony, and anything

else you want to add and submit for the record we’d appreciate

very much, and thank you all for your work in the community.

With that the subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:55 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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