Going forward, we must develop a comprehensive - but not bureaucratic or government-centric - framework wherein communities that are directly or indirectly affected by a large-scale disaster can flourish on a sustainable path to rebuilding and revitalization. This framework and accompanying plans must be closely guided by, and have at their core, the citizens, private sector, and faith-based and community organizations that are most severely and directly affected. After all, individual citizens and the private and non-profit sectors are our society's wells of creativity, innovation, and resourcefulness, and they have the greatest stake in, and urgency for, revitalizing their community.

The research of the Rockefeller Report ("Response, Recovery, and the Role of the Nonprofit Community in the Two Years Since Katrina and Rita"), however, offers a contrary conclusion that says, essentially, the White House strategy won't work. (my emphasis)

Nonprofit, community-based, and faith-based organizations are well-suited to help out in disaster response and recovery. They are flexible, they can adapt their missions, they can marshal resources, and they can get around stultifying paperwork. But even the most efficient, well-run, well-funded nonprofit group has a limited reach. For all of the work that the nonprofit sector has done and continues to do in the hurricane recovery effort, it is still more akin to a drop in the bucket rather than a giant wave.

The scale of the devastation is so vast in Louisiana and across the Mississippi Gulf Coast that only the government has the capacity to handle significant rebuilding. The nonprofit sector was not meant to replace government as the primary agent of recovery -- although the research indicates it seems to have taken the lead in areas like St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans, where the local governments are struggling. Rather it was to buttress the governmental response, to fill in the gaps left by government. For the recovery to proceed in a timely and substantial way, government must take the lead while the nonprofit, community-based, and faith-based organizations play a strong supporting role with their focus on the human element of the disaster.

This problem, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the faith-based funding scheme that has sent many millions of taxpayer dollars to religious organizations in exchange for social services. The charitable work of religious organizations is essential. But it should be undertaken freely and without either the restrictions or the expectations that come with government funds. Martin Luther King famously warned of the dangers of the church becoming the "servant" rather than the "conscience" of the state. "It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool."

In that same spirit, it's wrong for the government to slough its responsibilities off to religious and other nonprofit groups, hoping that the charitable commitment of Americans will pick up the slack. That dependency compromises the church-state relationship, and worse yet, as this new report demonstrates, it won't work.

[Cross-posted from the blog of the Baptist Joint Committee]