God And The Welfare State

Book Summary

When the Bush administration's faith-based initiative was introduced in2001 as the next stage of the "war on poverty," it provoked a flurry of protest forviolating the church-state divide. Most critics didn't ask whether it could work.Godand the Welfare State is the first book to trace the ideas behind George W. Bush'sfaith-based initiative from their roots in Catholic natural law theory and DutchCalvinism to an American think tank, the Center for Public Justice. Comparing Bush'splan with the ways the same ideas have played out in Christian Democratic welfarepolicies in Europe, the author is skeptical that it will be an effective new way tofight poverty. But he takes the animating ideas very seriously, as they go to theheart of the relationship among religion, government, and social welfare.In the endDaly argues that these ideas--which are now entrenched in federal and statepolitics--are a truly radical departure from American traditions of governance.Although Bush's initiative roughly overlaps with more conventional conservativeefforts to strengthen private power in economic life, it promises an unprecedentedshift in the balance of power between secular and religious approaches to socialproblems and suggests a broader template for "faith-based governance," in which thestate would have a much more limited role in social policy.

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