Article Review

Jason Hackworth’s article focuses on the role of American Gospel Rescue Missions (GRMs) for the homeless as fortuitous vehicles of neoliberalism within American society. In other words, American GRMs inadvertently function to support the political and economic goals of the federal government. Hackworth only briefly discusses how these organizations support neoliberalism and that is through their general ideology that dire conditions like poverty and homelessness result from personal failures. Moreover, in order to remedy the quandaries that result individuals need to seek spiritual guidance, repentance, and actively work towards a better future.  Hackworth also suggests that these religious missions also relieve the welfare burden of the state since approximately 60% of GRMs refuse to rely on government financial support for sustenance. The main reason for this refusal is religious: the federal government tends to make specific demands of these religious organizations that are areligious and at odds with their proselytizing mission. However it is ironic that one of the conditions for receiving HIV aid from President Bush’s PEPFAR was that recipient countries did not use the money to help/educate sex workers, this in order to appease the fundamentalist Christian support of the government. Intriguingly, Hackworth’s research showed that rescue missions felt more accepted within their municipalities (e.g. city contracted rescue missions) than at the federal level. This speaks to the phenomenon that religion can prove useful at one level of government but exist at odds with another level. Furthermore upon examining Table 4 the question arises as to whether rescue missions and even organizations like them support private enterprise or the dreaded “welfare state”. For example, the NYC and Bowery Missions offer free medical and dental to the needy. Should this not foment a desire to expect these services from federal and state governments?

The Laird and Cage chapter dedicates itself to the exploration of the role of religious identity of faith based organizations in a sort of case study. Although Hackworth asserts that the religious identity of faith based organizations cannot by typified with any accuracy, Laird and Cage agree with Thomas Jeavons that degrees of religious/spiritual identity exists in faith based organizations. The authors studied two Muslim affiliated clinics by interviewing staff and analyzing their speech for religious associations towards the clinics. The authors determined that generally the staff members were concerned with the non-Muslim perception of Islam in America and therefore the clinics served as a means of disabusing the negative perception of Muslim passiveness (pre-9/11). One founder of the Al-Shifa clinic in particular desired to contribute to American society as an American instead of simply benefitting from society as a second generation immigrant. The authors also concluded that although far from being proselytizing endeavours the existence of the clinics met the spiritual needs of the founders, in particular the doctrine of zakat (almsgiving). Interestingly, unlike the GRMs the clinics were not hesitant to accept government aid and funding issues mainly surrounded whether or not zakat is meant for Muslims alone or can be applied to non-Muslims as well. This begs the question as to whether it is the type of sector that determines faith based organization acceptance of government aid, or whether it is the identity of the faith based organization that determines this.

William Garriot writes with the burden that the Christian moral perception of addiction in America has prevented the classification of addiction as a physical health problem, and instead typifies addiction as a “disease of the will”. As a result government policies at all levels tend to only treat addiction by attacking it from a criminalization standpoint instead of focusing of medicalizing addiction. Garriot’s argument seems to be more of an attack against the Christian perception that any ailment can be overcome by faith in God and personal effort. He hardly offers any means by which addictions can be treated more like other physical ailments such as cancer. At any rate he would be hard pressed to do so because recovery still has to be chosen by the addict. Individuals cannot be forced to end their addictions except in jurisprudence against an addict who has committed a crime. Garriot also seems to imply that Christianity is the only religion that associates/classifies mental illness as curable by spiritual intervention, and he further understates the role that religion especially Christianity has played in recovery from addiction for thousands.