Faith-based

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In the United States, the term faith-based is used to describe organizations that are religious in nature and distinguish those organizations from government, public or private secular organizations.

1 History
2 Applications
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

In recent years the term has come into public use as an abbreviation of "faith-based initiative", e.g. U.S. President George W. Bush's proposal to grant religious charitable social-service groups federal money via the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. "Faith-based" is often used as a euphemism for "religious" in this context, in order to avoid the thorny issue of whether such funding is permissible under the Establishment Clause.

[edit] Applications

Funding for faith-based organizations in the U.S. centers around several signature initiatives including the Compassion Capital fund, an initiative designed to strengthen the role faith-based organizations play in human services; Mentoring Children of Prisoners, an initiative focused on supporting the children of incarcerated adults; Access to Recovery, which focuses in increasing the availability of drug and alcohol treatment programs and the Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative which focuses on helping individuals returning from prison to successfully re-integrate themselves back into society. In providing these grants to faith-based groups, the Federal Government has also set up a comprehensive set of supports for groups who are interested in applying for these resources.

A faith-based organization, a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and U.S. to describe a particular niche within the Voluntary Sector. Generally, but by no means exclusively, a faith-based organization will be philanthropic in nature, constituted as a charity or non-profit, and aligned with one of the world's major religions. For many years faith-based organizations have played major roles in society, delivering a variety of services to the public, such as caring for the infirm and elderly, advocating justice for the oppressed and playing a major role as NGO's in humanitarian aid and international development efforts.

Faith-based organizations range in size from the small church who serves food to the homeless to huge, well organized entities such as Catholic Charities USA. Catholic Charities USA has been in existence for many years and provide a variety of services to communities across the U.S. Catholic Charities describes itself as one of the U.S.’s largest social service networks focusing on issues such as poverty, family support and community empowerment.

According to Science and Theology News, “For all their controversy, faith-based groups are nothing new. Since the late 18th century, from a period known as the Second Awakening, there have been numerous voluntary civic associations loosely connected with faith groups. They included the Connecticut Missionary Society, formed in 1798, and the American Home Missionary Society, formed in New York in 1826.”

The terms "faith-based", or "faith-based community", can also be used as a term to describe a perceived style of, or trend in, politics, which is broadly opposed to the reality-based approach. Faith-based politics typically supports faith-based initiatives, without siding with any particular faith, and is skeptical of some areas of scientific concern, such as evolution and anthropogenic global warming.