Heart-Shaped Box

05 October 2005

Franklin Graham steps lively on CNN, refusing to blame New Orleans’s Mardi Gras hedonism for Katrina, and instead merely offering the destruction of the city as a prime opportunity for revival and redemption in a city of sin. More interesting than such posturing, however, is Graham’s broadly-expanded vision of the role, and rewards, for “faith-based initiatives.” Defending his dedication to the victims in New Orleans by citing the efforts of his organization, Samaritan’s Purse, to bring FEMA trailers to the city, Graham outlined a plan for church-controlled relief: FEMA ought to give the trailers to local churches — which could best determine which families need them most and manage the process more efficiently than could the federal government — and after a year, allow the churches to repossess the trailers and reuse or sell them as they see fit. “‘I don’t think the government should be in the trailer-park business,'” argued Graham. “‘I don’t think they know how to run a trailer park.'” Churches, one can only assume, do. It may seem a far cry from the original justifications for federally funding faith-based charities — that government programs can provide money and material support, but not the “love” that poor people need — to now argue that federally-owned emergency housing is best distributed by church officials who wish to renovate the sinful city’s “moral fiber,” but why question the vision of those motivated only by faith-filled love?

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