Keeping the Faith.

• Author: Waldman, Steve
• Position: Religion and social service

PRESIDENT BUSH ON MAY 21, went to the campus of Notre Dame University to unveil his beloved "faith-based initiative" to give federal support to religious organization that deliver services to the needy. Curiously, Notre Dame was also the site of Bill Clinton's first major speech about his "pet idea"--national service, In 1991, as he campaigned for president, it was here that he laid out his vision for a program that would enable young people to perform community service in exchange for college aid, an idea that later became a new program, AmeriCorps.

This is more than just an historical coincidence. In many faiths, including Catholicism, service and belief in God are linked. That's certainly the case at Notre Dame. Indeed, upon graduating, some 60 graduating seniors annually enlist in a university-run program called the Alliance for Catholic Education. The program trains these students as teachers and places them for two-year stints in parochial schools throughout the South, in return for small stipends and help paying off their college loans. It would be hard to think of a faith-based effort that would be more appealing to the education-minded Bush. But here's the irony: The program is partly paid for by AmeriCorps.

It's now become clear that the key to making Bush's pet idea succeed is to make Clinton's pet idea bigger.

When President Bush offered his plans for promoting faith-based charity soon after taking office, he mentioned three initiatives. First, he promised to change the tax code to give charitable deductions to those who don't itemize their tax returns--a great idea, but one he quickly abandoned so he would still have enough money for the rest of his tax cut.

Second, he proposed giving grants to religious groups to help them do good works. Some variant of this idea could still become law but in a far more modest form, thanks to opposition from liberals fearful of church-state problems and conservatives fearful of government manipulation of religion.

Third, Bush suggested (somewhat to the surprise of other Republicans who had become accustomed to attacking AmeriCorps) that national service should also be part of the mix.

Now that the prospects for the first two proposals have dimmed, it falls to the third--national service--to carry through the faithbased initiative. And that's a good thing, because AmeriCorps is in many ways the perfect vehicle to promote faith-based action.

When I worked at the Corporation for National Service...