Though the nation's religious congregations are now eligible to compete directly for billions of federal social-service dollars, few of them are stepping forward seeking contracts.
Four months after President Bush began touting the controversial "charitable choice" option, officials report no rush for grants by small faith-based groups. They say agencies around the country are detecting scant change in their pool of contract applicants for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
The picture that emerges shows that Bush is far from winning over both secular critics of his plan and the very "armies of compassion" he is wooing. Pastors and other observers say some of the small groups share the critics' worries about church-state entanglement, while others are simply skittish about overextending themselves or handling the red tape.
"There's a lot of skepticism about: When will the other shoe drop?" said the Rev. George Anderson Jr., whose Giving of Self Partnership in West Oak Lane offers technical training to church groups. "It sounds too good to be true. Then they find the strings attached. That's why there's a lot of hesitation."
Sheila Kennedy, an Indiana-Purdue University professor who tracks charitable-choice trends, found that in Indiana, a concerted outreach to faith groups resulted in only eight social-service contracts out of 250 granted.
She recalled one pastor's comment: "With the shekels come the shackles."
The paperwork "is insane," the Rev. Ricci Hausley of Germantown said.
The Pentecostal pastor planned to have his Eagle's Nest Community Development Corp. seek a federally funded welfare-to-work contract until he saw the "three-inch-thick" application form.
"It's much too cumbersome for the average religious congregation," he said. "We backed away."
Under the 1996 federal charitable-choice provision, religious groups such as Eagle's Nest are eligible to compete for government grants without setting up nonprofit affiliates or losing their religious character. The rule already covers $19.5 billion in welfare, drug-treatment and community-development programs, and Bush wants to make it a government-wide provision.
The legislation to broaden it has run into blistering opposition in Congress, and observers said doubts about its fate are contributing to faith groups' wait-and-see posture.
The Philadelphia Workforce Development Corp., which distributes welfare-to-work funds for City Hall, has had "no marked increase" in faith-based applicants, said president Ernest Jones. The agency recently solicited proposals for a job-training project, he said, and had two religious groups among 55 applicants.
The city's Department of Human Services has just finalized its fiscal 2002 social-service contracts and reports "maybe three or four" new faith-based groups among its hundreds of service providers.
Twenty-seven percent of the department's $360 million in contracted services will go to religiously affiliated groups, up from 26 percent last year. But most are large entities, such as Catholic Social Services, that have had contracts for years.
DHS officials have held town meetings and other outreach to community and faith groups, spokeswoman Liza Rodriguez said. That brought "many inquiries, but they didn't necessarily lead to proposals," she said. "The new ones may have felt they are too small at this point."
Size is one of the litany of concerns that Kennedy and others have heard from balky congregations.
"The average church has fewer than 100 members," Kennedy said, "and they don't have the capacity to do what the President thinks they can. That's why there's not a huge rush."
Also, she said, some congregations worry about "mission creep - that they will become dependent on government funding and will become co-opted."
For others, the hitch is filing for nonprofit 501(c)(3) status for their social programs, an intensive process that can take months and cost several thousand dollars.
At the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, associate director Stanley Carlson-Thies lamented the "tragically slow changes" and said they point up some dire needs, such as for more workshops and Web sites to help newcomers learn about how to apply for government money.
Another emerging need, he said, is for large nonprofit agencies to act as funding intermediaries and handle the red tape for smaller grassroots groups.
The Rev. W. Wilson Goode, the ex-mayor who is spearheading Philadelphia's faith-based initiatives, works at Public/Private Ventures, an intermediary for projects funded by Pew Charitable Trusts. It is considering being an intermediary for charitable-choice funds as well.
Without intermediaries, Mr. Goode said, "we're just going to have the same few groups involved."
Mark Chaves, a University of Arizona sociologist who has chronicled the low rate of charitable-choice involvement, argues the procedural-hurdle problem is overblown.
"The small churches may have been running, feeding and clothing programs," Chaves said, "but if you look at who was actually running job-training and drug-rehab and domestic-violence programs, the complicated programs, the numbers drop way down to, like, 5 percent. There weren't really barriers to their participation. They didn't do social services before and don't really want to now."
In Philadelphia, where hundreds of churches run social ministries of various scales, the Rev. James McJunkin summed up the sentiment he hears as director of the African American Interdenominational Ministries:
"There's a lot of energy and debate. People find it potentially meaningful to the kinds of work they are already doing. It's not as if the faith-based industry starts now because Washington's paying for it. They are busy and they're not waiting around."