The varieties of faith-related agencies

Although some recent literature suggests religious social service agencies can help governments reach important social program goals, the true social organization and services of the agencies remain in dispute. This article i nterviews officials in the wide class of "faith-related" agencies in two ci ties to consider two aspects of this issue: the ties or "coupling" of agenc ies to faith, and the impact of coupling on agency structure and service pr ogramming. The results suggest that many sampled agencies are loosely tied to faith in terms of resources, more tightly coupled in terms of authority and moderately coupled with respect to culture; that certain aspects of ser vice-delivery technology are heavily secularized in many agencies; that fai th is more influential in such matters as the agencies' choices of services ; and that the larger, potentially more secularized agencies that might be least likely to be characterized as faith based balance differing sets of r esources and thereby can more fully deliver services that arguably express faith in action. Given this finding and that most agencies profess a focus on protecting the dignity and rights of clients rather than on individual r esponsibility or other themes that are stressed by some recent policy propo sals, governments need to be extremely selective in funding agencies to pro mote those proposals' themes.