White House Urges Clergy to Help Fight Unemployment

Can churches, synagogues and mosques serve as employment agencies? President Clinton hopes so.

Meeting with 130 members of the clergy this week at the White House, the president suggested that religious groups should be doing more than saving souls: They should help put bread on the table by finding jobs for the unemployed.

“If every church in America challenged every member of that church who had 25 or more employees to hire another family, the [jobless] problem would go away,” Clinton said.

But while religious groups have long provided social services--from homeless shelters to food banks--religious leaders had mixed reactions to the president’s challenge.

The head of the National Council of Churches, which generally is politically liberal and represents 33 mainly old-line Protestant and Orthodox churches with 52 million members, voiced concern that government might be trying to abdicate its own responsibility in looking to religious institutions to ease joblessness.

“I think the church can be challenged, and people within the churches, to provide employment for welfare recipients,” said the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the council, who attended the White House meeting.

But “acts of individual charity are not a guarantee of justice,” she added, calling it the government’s responsibility, in the end, “to make sure people have a decent life.”

By contrast, the more politically conservative National Assn. of Evangelicals, which represents 47 member denominations as well as independent churches with a total of 20 million members, was more sympathetic to Clinton’s approach.

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Association President Don Argue, who also attended Monday’s White House meeting, said he was open to the president’s suggestion that federal funds be funneled through churches to find jobs for the unemployed.

“Many in the church have had questions regarding government welfare. This provision provides the church with the opportunity to carry out the biblical admonition to care for the poor,” Argue said. “I see something very exciting here.”

Indeed, association Vice President David Melvin said that when the group holds its annual convention this March in Orlando it will take up a resolution--still being drafted--that urges member churches to fill the gap created by cuts in government welfare spending.

Tackling issues such as unemployment is not new to religious groups. In Los Angeles, for example, evangelical groups and African American churches such as the First African Methodist Episcopal Church as have established entrepreneurial training schools. Others have created credit unions to help members and others start small businesses.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints runs an employment division within its welfare program to help provide the unemployed, primarily church members, with job training and job contacts.

But Clinton’s appeal to the clergy comes at a time when the federal and state governments are cutting back welfare programs. A key provision of the new welfare laws requires able-bodied recipients to find jobs.

Many of the nation’s leading religious institutions, including the National Council of Churches and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, opposed the cutbacks. Although they supported the principle that those able to work should do so, they opposed what they saw as the unraveling of the nation’s “safety net” for the poor. Others, such as the National Assn. of Evangelicals, were far more supportive.

Unemployment in the United States stood at 5.4% in November, the latest figure available. That translated into 7.2 million people out of work. California’s unemployment rate was 6.9% for the same time period, and even higher in the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area--7.6%.

“This is an economic problem, not a religious problem,” said Vivian Rothstein, executive director of the Ocean Park Community Center in Santa Monica, which works with religious and nonreligious groups to provide a network of emergency shelter and social services for homeless and unemployed people. “It’s outrageous to think that the religious community can solve an economic problem like this.”

Clinton, a Southern Baptist, undoubtedly knew his appeal would provoke some skepticism, particularly the notion that religious institutions theoretically could solve the unemployment problem. But he also knew it would touch the religious consciences of the gathered clergy.

Christians, for example, often are reminded of the injunction attributed to Jesus in the New Testament (Matthew 25) to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and extend hospitality to the stranger. Hebrew Scriptures exhort Jews to love their neighbors. Moreover, Jewish piety is always linked to concrete actions that benefit others.

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Salam Al-Marayati, director of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, said religious groups serve as the “conscience of society.”

“I think religious organizations are capable of playing the role of . . . encouraging their followers throughout America to do more than get a paycheck,” Al-Marayati said. “The corporations are run by human beings and these human beings are affected by religion and faith. What the president is doing is establishing a voice for that concern so that it may eventually influence the corporation community.”

Campbell called for another meeting with the White House to discuss a partnership between government and religious groups to “end poverty as we know it.”

“If we can have an agreement . . . as to what are the basic needs for a minimal decent life, then I think the church and the government can be partners,” she said. “But I think it will require more than just individuals providing jobs.”