`Faith-based' approach fraught with problems, new study finds. (People & Events).

Faith-based organizations are no less susceptible to management and accountability problems than their secular counterparts, a new study indicates.

The study, "Should we have faith in faith-based social services?: Rhetoric versus realistic expectations," surveyed press reports of wrong-doing in faith-based groups from 1995 to 2001. Authors Margaret Gibelman and Sheldon R. Gelman of Yeshiva University's School of Social Work, assert, "Findings reveal that faith-based groups appear to be as susceptible to managerial and accountability inadequacies, if not outright wrongdoing, as are nonsectarian providers."

Writing in the Fall 2002 edition of Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Gibelman and Gelman assert that President George W. Bush's faith-based initiative was predicated on several unproven assumptions, chiefly that government-run social services had failed and that religious groups could easily replace traditional service providers.

In fact, the two found several instances of fraud involving money and "scams that used faith and religion as the pretext for wide-scale fraud of those who identify with faith groups. The intent in these cases was to commit criminal acts under the cover of serving the faithful."

Conclude the two, "As the analysis of cases highlights, the sanctity afforded religion does not make faith-based institutions immune from the types of wrongdoings that occur among secular nonprofits."

Gibelman and Gelman also noted that small non-profits and houses of worship are often exempt from government scrutiny and IRS audits, making effective oversight all the more difficult.

"Emerging revelations about faith-based groups, however, negate the images emanating from Washington, D.C., that a distinctly religious approach to services is morally compelling," they write. "Just because an organization is faith-based does not exempt its leadership from the human frailties that beset other organizational leaders."

In their conclusion, Gibelman and Gelman assert that without appropriate oversight, scandals involving faith-based organizations may proliferate and result in a lack of public confidence in religious groups.

"The fact that faith-based groups provide good works under church auspices does not mean that they need not be accountable to anybody...., "they write. "Unless we address the underlying conditions that made these wrongdoings possible, fresh scandals will fill our newspapers, and public trust in faith-based groups will erode, just as we have witnessed in the nonprofit sector in general."

In other news about the faith-based initiative:

* TV preacher Pat Robertson issued a statement Oct. 30 trying to explain why he accepted $500,000 from the federal government for his Operation Blessing after earlier criticizing the faith-based initiative.

Robertson acknowledged that he had once asserted that accepting government money was dangerous because it could lead to government intrusion into religious affairs. He now claims that the Bush plan has been altered and no longer presents this threat.

"I am delighted that the faith-based initiative, as currently presented, does not have the same intrusive quality as was first laid out in initial proposals," he wrote. Robertson further asserted that Operation Blessing, which has an annual budget of $50 million, would not become dependent on government grants.

In fact, church-state experts say the Bush faith-based plan remains the same as ever in its approach to grants, so Robertson's explanation lacks credibility.

* Jim Towey, director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, says President Bush's plan to direct potentially billions in tax aid to religious groups presents no church-state problems.

"This is about the poor," he told an audience in Hickory, N.C., Oct. 28. "When you hear this is about separation of church and state, this is a lie. The question you should be asking is, do the programs work and are they turning people's lives around?"