July 29, 2003

An interview with An Interview with Mary Nelson of Bethel New Life

Mary Nelson Mary Nelson is President and CEO of Bethel New Life, a 24-year-old faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. Bethel works in housing, community development, employment and family support. In addition, she is a faculty member of the Asset Based Community Development Institute, and teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago and Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education. She holds a Ph.D. from Union Graduate School and has five honorary degrees. Nelson serves on the Boards of Christian Community Development Association, Call to Renewal, Working Group on Human Needs and Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, National Congress of Community Economic Development and is chair of the Boards of Good City and Loretto Hospital Foundation. She was one of 30 leaders appointed to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's Transition team to advise the governor on community and economic development. Bethel has 318 employees and 1,281 volunteers, and the program has served 12,000 individuals. Bethel has brought in more than $110 million worth of investments into the west side community, developed more than 1,000 units of affordable housing, and has placed more than 5,000 people in living-wage jobs.

The Roundtable: How much of the Bethel budget comes from the government? Ms. Nelson: Seventy percent comes from the government. We’ve been getting government money since we started -- at least 23 years. The Roundtable: So your organization is an example of a faith-based organization that’s been working with government long before the Bush administration launched its faith-based initiative. What changes have you seen under the efforts of the administration? Ms. Nelson: It’s gotten worse. It’s a cruel hoax. The dollars have dried up and are going to dry up more drastically with the new tax cuts. The White House runs around the country encouraging all these smaller groups to apply for government funding. They’re getting people all hyped up. These are complicated proposals, and there’s no money there. The Roundtable: Is there more government oversight or intervention now with faith-based groups? Ms. Nelson: There is more government intervention. There is more transparency about the issues of faith-based organizations providing services. That’s probably helpful. There’s transparency of having total separation of funds and activities between your faith-functions and your community service functions -- of not discriminating against people coming into initiatives that have government dollars, not only by race but by religious affiliation -- and of not proselytizing. The Roundtable: How is faith an element of your organization and its work? Ms. Nelson: Bethel’s mission statement is a Bible passage -- Isaiah 58: 9-12 -- and we had to fight with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the early years to say that was our legal mission statement. We won the battle. We grew out of the ministry of a local community church and we’re still connected viscerally. As a community development corporation, 70 percent of our board is community residents. About 40 percent are, in some way, connected to Bethel church. The Roundtable: It seems that under today’s faith-based initiative, you won’t be having those battles with federal agencies over mission statements. Ms. Nelson: Many of us fought and won those battles years ago, and so that was long before the initiative. The Roundtable: Then what do you think is the purpose of the current faith-based initiative? Ms. Nelson: Nothing, until they put some money into these things. What’s so galling is they’ve divested major dollars from funded programs to sponsor these workshops and conferences all over the country to recruit faith-based organizations. So there’s less money to do the real work for needy people. The Roundtable: Do you see government money going from relatively large faith-based organizations like yours, to small, street-corner houses of worship? Ms. Nelson: These little faith-based organizations, unless they’ve got someone else handling their administrative stuff, will be unable to handle all the government paperwork and red tape that comes with government funding. There are so many possibilities for government to “get ya.” It scares me. The Roundtable: You recently testified before a U.S. House committee where you were asked about a legislative proposal to give federally funded religious organizations the right to take faith into account when employing staff. How would that legislative provision affect the operations of your organization? Ms. Nelson: We have an attorney who makes sure we’re towing the line. It’s complicated for the employer because of all the different regulations, not just the faith-based provision. This type of legislation wouldn’t affect us at all because, as I said in my testimony, we give preference to community residents. And secondly, we are very transparent about the fact that we are faith-based and what our mission statement is. We don’t proselytize and we don’t say you have to be a part of our church. We just say to people, ’If this is an uncomfortable setting for you, we’re probably not the right place for you.’ The Roundtable: Do you deny employment to someone based on their religious beliefs? Ms. Nelson: A couple of our major staff members are Jewish. We’ve hired a Hindu. Our track record speaks well for this -- but they had the right spirit. They subscribed to the values and the commitment. The commitment is that every person is special and is loved and cared for by God, no matter what you call God. There’s a commitment to justice. We say, ‘You have to make a commitment to a set of values.’ The Roundtable: What if they can’t make that commitment? Ms. Nelson: Then this is no place for them. The Roundtable: Do you need a new law to help you employ who you want? Ms. Nelson: No. The Roundtable: What is the future for the faith-based initiative? Ms. Nelson: I think it’s going to explode in the administration’s face if they don’t get money in there pretty soon. They’re slashing all the very programs that have made things work - whether it’s Vista, Head Start or all of the basic programs. It’s going to boomerang in time. The Roundtable: Did you support the initiative when it was first proposed? Ms. Nelson: Yes. I was hopeful. I was right there with 20 others with the President when he launched this. There’s a fairly common dissatisfaction with the direction it has taken. It’s a much more political and politicized thing than any of us had expected. The Roundtable: Are faith-based organizations more effective than secular groups in providing social services and getting results? Ms. Nelson: The data isn’t there to academically substantiate the work. William Raspberry, the columnist, wrote about this years before this current faith-based initiative. He said when you look at the most effective groups in drug rehabilitation, a majority of them had a faith-component. And it didn’t matter what faith that was. But you can’t move from that and say that all faith-based groups are more effective because that’s not the case. Now, faith-based workers put their soul into it. That’s not true across the board -- but the great majority of our people are doing it because they care about their neighborhoods. They have a passion about the transformation, and that they’ll make a difference in people’s lives. We call our faith-based work here the three Gs. One is the glue that holds us together when racism and ageism - all the "isms" - would pull us apart. God reminds us of the bigger picture for the human community. The second G is the gasoline for the long-haul, because this stuff takes time. You can’t give up on people. It’s the staying power to be not just successful, but to be faithful. And, the third G is the guts to make risky decisions to say, “This has to be done,” even when the world is saying, “No, it’s impossible.” With God’s help, we’ll do it. The Roundtable: Thank you for speaking with us.