Beneath the Surface of the Welfare Debates

January-February 1996

WASHINGTON, D.C.—If you think the process of reforming welfare policy is nearing completion, think again. The tinkering in Washington over the past three years has not gone very deep. With or without block grants to the States, most of the important questions about welfare reform remain unanswered. The agreement that government must one day balance its budget has not been accompanied by an agreement about the nature of government's responsibility toward poor families, the long-term unemployed, young unwed mothers, and hopelessly addicted teenagers.

For the past three years, with help from a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Center for Public justice has been examining the deeper questions underlying the inability of government policy makers to agree on sound welfare reform. Now the book is out--a book that moves beyond the headlines to the complex reality.

Welfare in America: Christian Perspectives on a Policy in Crisis, edited by Stanley W. Carlson-Thies and James W. Skillen (Eerdmans, 1996), looks at more than budgets and block grants. It asks what difference it would make if policy makers started with the assumptions that human beings are created in the image of God, that human well-being depends on the fulfillment of many different kinds of social responsibility, and that government's limited role can be both extremely important and highly constructive.

Welfare in America argues that assistance to the needy does not, and should not, come primarily from government. Government, whether at federal or state levels, should help hold people accountable to their various institutional and personal responsibilities rather than fill in for every failure. For well-being to replace poverty and social decay, families, churches, schools, and other institutions must also fulfill their distinct obligations.

The book's two dozen authors handle topics ranging from family dysfunction to global economic restructuring, from constitutional disputes about government support for faith-based charities to social science's confusion about social causes and effects, from changes in welfare policies to the revitalization of civil society. The authors include not only long-time Center for Public Justice Associates Charles Glenn (Boston University), Stephen Monsma (Pepperdine University), Clarke Cochran (Texas Tech University), Julia Stronks (Whitworth College), Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen (Eastern College), and John Mason (Gordon College), but also social critic Jean Bethke Elshtain (University of Chicago), law professor Mary Ann Glendon (Harvard University), social ethicist Max Stackhouse (Princeton Theological Seminary), welfare policy expert Lawrence Mead (New York University), and many more. Included as an appendix is the Center's essay first released in 1994, "A New Vision for Welfare Reform."

—The Editor