Nathan Glazer's Warning

I've expressed concern often at this blog about what government is doing to non-profits and church charities and outreach. Nathan Glazer warned that social policy often does more harm than good, and extends this to what happens when the government footprint squashes local charities.

Just as families and buildings risk harm from social policy, so too do nonprofit social-services organizations. In The Limits of Social, Policy

Glazer makes clear that the sort of marriage between government and nonprofits that the Obama White House is pursuing may fundamentally change what makes the helping organizations of civil society so great. As an example, he points to the Meals on Wheels programs that bring food to elderly shut-ins. These programs were effective and cheap back when local charities ran them on their own. “They are small, they rely on volunteers to cook and deliver the meals (often using their own cars and their own gasoline), they are sponsored by churches and other voluntary organizations, they depend on local contributions for the cost of food and whatever paid staff they use, they generally charge for the meals but provide them free for those who cannot afford to pay. All in all, a useful and economic service.”

But then Congress voted to provide federal assistance to the programs. The result was a “host of potential difficulties,” including requirements “that each service must provide more than one hundred meals daily, that they provide auxiliary social services to meals recipients, that they cooperate with area-wide comprehensive planning services for the elderly, that they train their staffs and send them to seminars provided by the Administration on Aging, . . . that they have full-time directors.” Glazer’s concluding reflection can be applied to other programs as well: “When one realizes that meals-on-wheels programs are small, use volunteers, are unacquainted with elaborate paperwork and regulations involved in qualifying for federal assistance, one sees the difficulties they will have in satisfying government regulations and in also remaining who they are.” Government’s seemingly benign endeavor to extend the reach of local social programs, then, is deeply hazardous.

Nathan Glazer's Warning by Howard Husock, City Journal Summer 2011

But in addition, churches that take government money are then stifled in their primary responsibility--providing the Gospel to the needy. Who is it that tries to stop the Gospel?