Mixing God's Work and the Public Business: A Framework for the Analysis of Faith-Based Service Delivery

Over the past thirty years, there has been a dramatic transformation in the way the American political process operates. There has been a growing public perception that traditional political institutions lack the capacity to meet existing challenges. This has led many observers to call for a rethinking of how government does its work. Numerous alternatives, including the use of faith-based organizations, have been suggested. The current popular debate on the appropriate role of faith-based organizations in public service delivery has shed little light on a number of important issues raised by engaging such actors in governance issues. The impact of using faith-based institutions to design and implement public policy must be considered not only in terms of traditional evaluation standards, but also regarding potential long-term impacts on the political process itself. This article outlines a theoretical framework for the evaluation of faith-based organizations as "alternatives" to conventional governance structures. It identifies key practical and theoretical issues raised by such substitution, in both short and long range systemic terms. Copyright 2007 by The Policy Studies Organization.