Ambiguous Embrace: Government and Faith-Based Schools and Social Agencies, The

The Ambiguous Embrace: Government and Faith-Based Schools and Social Agencies. By Charles L. Glenn. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. xii + 315 pp. $35.00 (cloth).

In this important and provocative book about educational policy in the United States, Episcopal priest and Boston University professor Charles Glenn argues that faith-based institutions ought to be playing a far more active role in American public life than they are at present. In Glenn's estimation, it should be possible for government to make funds available to religious schools and social service agencies without either violating the principles of the First Amendment or stifling-by way of "a fatal embrace" (p. 9)-the theological beliefs and goals of the institutions themselves. Three basic assumptions inform the author's well-reasoned thesis. First, Glenn believes in the usefulness of providing support to "value-generating and value-- maintaining agencies" (p. 3) that mediate between individuals and the state. Second, he is concerned about both the weakening of institutions that once fostered a sense of moral obligation in the American citizenry and the emergence of what social theorist Richard John Neuhaus calls the "naked public square" (p. 7). And third, he favors the development of educational voucher programs, in which control of tax-generated funds would belong to the parents of the children being educated rather than to the so-called "monopoly" (p. 116) of "well-organized public employees" (p. 8) currently overseeing local school systems. Even if public funds were shifted to faith-based private schools, Glenn insists, this would not contravene constitutional guarantees of the separation of church and state because parents, not government officials, would choose how the money was spent-a situation not unlike the recognition and indirect support religious organizations already receive as charities under the federal income tax code.

In making his case for what would amount to a fundamental transformation of American public education, Glenn employs an impressive collection of data and ideas culled from diverse sources. He devotes considerable space, for instance, to analyzing the status of educational and social service institutions in several western European countries. As he notes, Germany and the Netherlands rely heavily upon religious organizations for delivery of many of the public services that constitute the welfare state in those nations. Glenn also examines the social service programs of religious organizations such as Teen Challenge (a Pentecostal street ministry among urban youth gangs), the Salvation Army, and Catholic Charities, all of which receive some limited government patronage. The commitment to religious pluralism that was central to the founding of the United States, he concludes, demands formal acceptance of the role of faith communities in transmitting and sustaining America's core values-a phenomenon on which Alexis de Tocqueville favorably commented when he visited the United States in the 1830s.

This book and Glenn's views will be of special interest to Episcopalians with memories of upheavals in church and society a few decades ago. Even if they disapprove of the evangelical, neoconservative tack that Glenn assumes today, these readers will surely be intrigued by his continuing dedication to radical social restructuring. Although he refers just briefly in this book to his own experiences, Glenn served on the staff of the General Convention Special Program (GCSP), a bold but conflict-ridden social outreach ministry of the Episcopal Church in the late 1960s. Based on his perspective as a key figure within GCSP, Glenn now thinks the controversial work that he and other national church officers undertook not only was emblematic of the spiritual decline of mainline Protestantism, but also did more harm than good within the inner-city communities their program was intended to benefit. In the early 1970s, Glenn was director of urban education and civil rights for the Massachusetts Department of Education. In that capacity he was the principal architect of the plan to desegregate the Boston public school system through the busing of students out of the neighborhoods in which they lived-a policy that soon turned working-class areas of the city into tense racial battlegrounds. While remaining committed to racial equality today, Glenn admits that the strategy he devised to attack racism in 1974 was divisive and ultimately counterproductive.

As this book and his two earlier, somewhat disastrous experiences with social change suggest, Glenn has a lively and creative intellect, and he does not shy away from criticism and controversy when implementing visions of a revolutionary new order. Whether or not one is thrilled or appalled by the author's current argument on behalf of school vouchers and a closer partnership between faith-based organizations and government, The Ambiguous Embrace is an engaging work that deserves a careful reading by American political, educational, and religious leaders.