No one gave him a Bible or asked him to pray, but when Hector landed at the Camillus Life Center nearly seven months ago, he knew he was in the embrace of a religious-based charity. The presence of the Catholic Brothers of the Good Shepherd, walking in their white collars through the narrow hallways of the treatment center for alcoholics and drug addicts, was the obvious tip-off, he said -- and would prove beneficial to the troubled man.
"One of the things about when I came here, this God thing was not really working for me, so I tried to get away from it," said the 35-year-old warehouseman who had hit bottom with alcohol and cocaine. "So of course they put me to work with the brothers -- they have a funny way of doing things here. And I was fortunate, one of the brothers, he let me make the decisions, but he sort of explained things to me -- how God might look at things and how I would look at them."
There is nothing new about faith-based charities; for years, most American cities and towns have had Catholic, Jewish or Protestant organizations that offer adoption assistance, health care or shelters for the homeless or abused. Camillus House, which provides a varied slate of social services including the Life Center, has been a Miami fixture for 40 years; its $7.5 million annual budget is made up of private donations and government grants.
But with Bush's unveiling of his White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, the relationship of such groups with the government and their God is coming under fresh scrutiny. Under Bush's program, religious groups will compete for billions of tax dollars earmarked for social programs.
This arrangement raises touchy questions about the extent to which some religious groups might try to serve extra helpings of biblical scripture or doctrine with their free meals, challenging the traditional separation of church and state. There also are concerns about how much money will be available and, given the likely increase in competition for funds, whether existing, worthy programs might lose out on grants and be forced to close.
Camillus Life Center is representative of the majority of faith-based agencies operating in Florida: Never do they ask a potential client if he is a Christian, officials said, nor refuse service to anyone who rejects their beliefs. But beyond such explicit no-nos, many programs operate on the conviction that the troubled can best help themselves only if they are willing to address their spiritual deficiencies. The philosophy is: If you want guidance, it's here.
"If somebody's spirituality comes from reading the Bible, that's fine. If somebody's spirituality comes from sitting at bayside and watching the water, that's fine," said Pat Cawley, the center's program administrator. "We help them explore what spirituality means to them, and part of what that can mean is looking at earlier religious beliefs -- what you were taught as a child, what you believe now, how did you get from there to here. But we don't promote Catholicism or anything."
Many administrators and ministers working with such faith-based agencies say they are heartened by the new focus but are eager to see exactly how the White House office will carry out its mission.
"My only concern would be the restrictions. I think for a church to be an authentic church, it needs to have freedom to be the church," said the Rev. Mack King Carter, pastor of one of south Florida's largest African American churches, Mount Olive Baptist in Fort Lauderdale.
"I would need to look and see what the restrictions would be, in terms of what you can or cannot do with the monies," Carter said. "I'm not talking about taking the funds and going out and buying a Cadillac, but as far as putting the money where we know it's supposed to be. The bottom line is, the church must not be in fetters. It cannot be in so deep with the government that it cannot speak out."
Although his 7,500-member church has for 83 years filled the informal role of community caretaker, it is, compared with Camillus House, a newcomer to the official social services arena. For the past three years, through its new community development corporation, Mount Olive has developed a formal slate of senior, housing and health programs, funded with about $250,000 in church tithes and government grants. But if governmental involvement were to become too entangling, Carter said, "we would cease to be involved with it."
As governor of Texas, Bush showed his support for these partnerships. Likewise, when his brother Jeb Bush (R) was sworn into office as Florida governor two years ago, he made his planned reliance on faith-based charities clear from the outset: "State government can draw much from these reservoirs of faith," Jeb Bush said in his inaugural speech.
Since then, the governor repeatedly has encouraged the use of faith-based agencies. The Florida Department of Children and Families is slowly transferring much of its responsibility to such groups with an eye toward the privatization of all child-welfare programs by 2003.
"Our department as a whole is moving toward community-based care," said Cecka Green, department spokeswoman. "We are looking to develop community alliances that will help determine what services the community needs. . . . We do have some contracts with Catholic Charities and other groups, but it's not the religion -- it's the service -- we're contracting for."
Florida civil liberties groups see Bush's push from Washington for faith-based involvement as something dangerous -- and new. "It is something new, and I don't think a lot of people understand it's something new," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. "There has been for generations in this country a contractual agreement between state and federal governments and religiously affiliated organizations, and we are dependent on that and they have added immeasurably to the welfare of this country.
"But why, in the eyes of the president, is that not sufficient? I think there is an agenda here -- to fund the religious missions of these organizations. The Bush brothers appear to be absolutely tone-deaf on the issue of the constitutional question of separation of church and state."
At Camillus Life Center, most of the clients, it turns out, are Baptists, not Catholic, Cawley said. The treatment aspect is similar to 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, she said, with the emphasis on a higher power and group therapy.
At any time, 55 men with drug or alcohol problems are housed in the center's pink building in the low-income Overtown neighborhood of Miami. The building also includes the Camillus House soup kitchen, which serves about 1,100 people a day and is where Life Center clients such as Hector and Joe quickly learned they were expected to do hard duty.
Both men were willing to allow their full names to be used in this report, but the center stopped them from providing their last names, saying it might discourage potential clients concerned about confidentiality of treatment.
Before he entered the center six months ago, Joe, 32, a former electrician, would begin a typical day with two beers before he had completed his morning shower, working on a third as he waited for the bus to take him to his job. When he noticed his hands shaking as he moved toward the refrigerator one morning, he realized he had to have help. The Life Center had an advantage over other programs -- it was free.
"This is a work program; they keep you busy for the first two months," Joe said. "My opinion is, they don't want you to think too much, which worked perfect for me because if I had been sitting around doing nothing all the time, I would've just got up and left. Then you reach phase two, and they have you think a little more and they teach you more about that -- the drug you do, why you drank. You get more time in the group, it gets a little deeper, you get out a little more on your own. Then it's phase three -- job search."
Hector, a Chicago native, was the veteran of three treatment programs, all paid with his worker's health insurance, before he ended up at the Life Center. He quickly noticed a big difference from previous programs -- mainly, there was no 30- or 60-day limit on length of stay.
"I came here and I was going to stay for six months and gain some weight and go home," Hector said. "So I stayed here and, like, man, the more sober I was, the more time I had to think, the more screwed up I knew I was."
Hector said the counseling methods were different at Camillus than at other programs. "Right here, they tell you exactly what your problem is, whether you like it or not. They're pretty blunt about it. There's more straight talk.
"At the same time, they may break you down, but they put hope in you. They say you can make it, and this is what you have to work at."
Hector and Joe are actively looking for jobs -- and an exit from the Life Center. They say they hope to never come back, except to visit friends.
"I'm looking forward to it," Hector said. "Without drinking and without being a total jerk, life is pretty good."