Vanderwoerd, James R. “Who Cares: Social Welfare in a Diverse Society.” In Christianity and Social Work: Readings on the Integration of Christian Faith and Social Work Practice, 3rd Ed. Edited by Beryl Hugen and T. Laine Scales. North American Association of Christians in Social Work, 2008.

Also published as Vanderwoerd, James R. “Who Cares? Social Welfare in a Diverse Society.” Social Work & Christianity 34, no. 4 (2007): 376-399.

Abstract

Government funding of religious organizations to provide public social servic- es is becoming increasingly legitimate in American social welfare. A possible unintended consequence of government funding is the erosion of religiousness in these organizations. However, lack of clarity about the nature of religious characteristics limits accurate assessment of the threat of government funding to organizational religiousness. This paper uses findings from a comparative case study of two government-funded faith-related social service organizations in the Midwest as an initial test of the utility of Sider and Unruh’s (2004) recently proposed typology of religious characteristics of social service and educational organizations The two studied organizations maintained high commitments to their religious convictions even while securing the majority of their revenues from government sources. Based on this finding, this study posits a two-dimensional conceptualization of organizational religiousness that helps to explain how faith-based organizations with substantial govern- ment funding can successfully resist secularization.


Publication Information
Author(s):
Dr. James Vanderwoerd
Publisher or Title:
Social Work & Christianity
Publication date:
2008
Category:
Book Chapter
Related Program:
Applied Social Sciences