FAITH-BASED DRUG REHABILITATION PROGRAM OFFERS ONLY ONE TREATMENT - JESUS
CHRIST

SAN ANTONIO - In the basement of a church on the seedy edge of downtown,
41-year-old Tony Garcia, a heroin addict since age 10, sits in a daze in a
worn-out pew. He is silent as the ex-junkies around him pray aloud in a
chaotic, joyous jumble of thank-you-Jesus-es.

Garcia and 26 other addicts are attending the Bible study that Victory Home
requires for their rehab.

Harlan Harrison, 21, a recovering addict and alcoholic, is saying, "If it
was education you needed, God would have sent a teacher. If it would have
been a disease, God would have sent a doctor.

"But it was sin. So he sent Jesus."

Garcia hopes Harrison is right. After years in and out of government-funded
treatment centers and prison, he's at his "last stop." If he can't end his
$240-a-day heroin addiction -- and the thievery and pimping for two
prostitutes that maintain it -- he'll return to prison, likely for the rest
of his life: "The next time will be 25 to life."

Pastor Freddie Garcia, the ex-junkie preacher who founded Victory Home
three decades ago, says Tony Garcia's chances are better here than at many
of the nonreligious programs funded by the state.

"We are having 60 percent, 70 percent, 80 percent success rate," Pastor
Garcia, 62, said of the hundreds who have passed through Victory Home.
"Anything over 10 percent, you're more successful than the government."

The preacher has shunned government funding. He battled the state of Texas
for years when it tried to force his faith-based program to apply for
licensure -- or stop billing itself as a rehab center. But when George W.
Bush became governor, a state policy that allows faith-based programs to
register as such and skip licensure went into effect.

Now that Bush is president, Garcia has warmed to the idea of government
funding for Victory Home. Bush signed an executive order nine days into his
administration to break down barriers for faith-based groups to compete for
federal social-service dollars.

"As long as there are secular alternatives, faith-based charities should be
able to compete for funding on an equal basis and in a manner that does not
cause them to sacrifice their mission," Bush said on the day he signed the
order establishing an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

The move set off alarms with civil libertarians -- and even some religious
groups wary of any policy that might infringe on First Amendment religious
freedoms.

"There's only so much government money to go around, and the state should
not be in the business of picking which religion to fund," said Jim
Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, which sued the
state last year over its funding of an evangelical group's job-training
program.

"The reason why we he have the (First Amendment) provision is the colony
governments were supporting the Church of England, and the Founders didn't
like that. You end up with this endless meddling in church affairs and
deciding which church you're going to fund," Harrington said.

But Garcia believes, as Bush does, that a separation of sorts still can
exist -- even when inherently religious programs receive government money.

"I really believe it can work, and there still would be a separation
between church and state," he said. "They're not going to pay my preachers,
and that's fine with me. They could pay for utilities and feeding the people."

Today, Victory Home depends on everything from private benefactors to
banana bread sales to feed the addicts who flock to the dilapidated home
with an "EXPECT A MIRACLE" sign out front. Sometimes, a food bank will
offer its surplus. Or a stranger shows up with a check. Together with
tithes from the poor congregation of 800 mostly ex-addicts, Victory Home
manages to dish up hearty meals three times a day at no cost to the new
residents.

"We serve about 300 meals a day," said Ramon Herrera, 41, an ex-addict who
for a $500 monthly salary -- a princely sum among the staff -- is Victory
Home's live-in director. His two young children live there. So does his
wife, Alma, who on Thursday helped serve a lunch of hamburger steaks and
gravy, salad and cornbread to the 45 men and 16 women staying there.

"Everybody walks in like toothpicks, and they walk out like bowling balls.
Not only do they gain Christ here, they gain some inches, too," Herrera said.

But feeding the soul remains the primary mission of Victory Home.

After breakfast at 6 a.m., the residents are reading the Bible by 6:30 a.m.
By 8 a.m., all must load up on a school bus -- men first, who sit in back,
segregated from the women up front -- for a raucous, song-filled ride to
Victory Temple. There, it's Bible studies until 12:30 p.m.

Harrison, a young Navajo from New Mexico with a gold earring and a
Mohawk-like ponytail, teaches the newcomers in the basement.

Rob Wisdom, 30, another ponytailed ex-addict who earns a $138 monthly
salary, teaches the next level in the church sanctuary upstairs. Like all
the teachers, he relates to his students -- from personal experience --
regaling them with his before-and-after-drugs testimony.

"I used to drink three cases a week, and then I went down to a 12-pack and
thought I was doing great," Wisdom said to the group in a morning lesson on
out-and-out abstinence. "But the Bible says to flee from all appearance of
evil. Yeah, you don't go to hell for drinking one beer, but what kind of
example is it if I'm up here drinking a Busch while I'm teaching you?"

They're back on the bus by 12:30 p.m. But the bus, with its torn upholstery
and questionable shock absorbers, won't get the go-ahead to lurch into gear
until Wisdom first offers a prayer -- and a riders' round of applause for
Jesus.

Carlos, a young man wearing a Texas Rangers' T-shirt, leads the bus in a
dizzying medley of religious songs that belies the bleakness passing by:
Buildings scrawled with gang graffiti. A "We Buy Ugly Homes" billboard ad.
Tiny storefronts that offer everything from check-cashing to pinatas.

A couple of recovering addicts offer their testimony, at Carlos' prodding.

From the front of the bus, a girl wearing her hair up in an "I Love Jesus"
scrunchie, could barely be heard because she didn't dare turn back and risk
eye contact with the men.

But a man from the back of the bus rang out loud and clear: "I thank God
because today I'm not going on a bus to the penitentiary. I'm going to
Victory Home to have a good meal."

And so goes each and every day in treatment at Victory Home. After lunch,
it was more singing. More Bible study. More prayer. And before dinner, the
group returned to Victory Temple for an evening church service that lasted
for hours.

Elsewhere in San Antonio, other faith-based drug rehabilitation programs
like The Patrician Movement are careful not to infuse religion so overtly.

"I'm a deacon in the Catholic Church, and my assignment is the Patrician
Movement," said executive director Patrick Clancey, whose drug-rehab
program receives much of its funding from the state and federal
governments. "But we do not proselytize and preach."

It is a world away from the Victory Home. But it resembles more of the
faith-based programs that governments have long funded. Like any other
state-licensed drug-rehabilitation program in Texas, The Patrician Movement
employs doctors, nurses, counselors and psychologists.

The program also offers a weekly Mass and morning chapel services led by
Clancey. But in capital letters on its program list, both are marked
"OPTIONAL."

"There's no real difference (between us and a secular program)," Clancey
says, noting that the former seminary grounds donated by the Catholic
Church provides more of a suggestion. "It sets a tone of asking people to
get in touch with their spirituality. I would like them to believe
something. I'm just as happy if people are into the Dalai Lama."

But not at Victory Home. Jesus, as the drug-addicts are reminded repeatedly
throughout the day, is the only way at this program.

Marc Stern, a lawyer with the American Jewish Congress, said such programs,
if funded by the federal government, are likely to provoke lawsuits
challenging the constitutionality of such a joint venture.

"Nobody who's a seriously committed Jew or Muslim is going to the Victory
Temple to be shorn of drug addiction," Stern said. "They have a right to
run this program, but not at government expense. The whole program is
geared to a particular modality -- which is accept Jesus and accepting
Jesus will drive out the addiction -- and that's not going to work for
everyone."

Bush, whose father feted Pastor Garcia at the White House, said faith-based
programs that work are worth the funding. He has cited U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft's efforts as a senator that opened opportunities for
faith-based social service groups to compete for welfare-to-work contracts.

"The charitable choice provision that had been debated in the welfare
reform package fully explored the constitutional questions," Bush said on
the day of his executive order. "I am convinced that our plan is
constitutional, because we will not fund . . . any religion, but instead,
will be funding programs that affect people in a positive way."

Government-funded or no, Tony Garcia wants desperately for Victory Home to
work for him the way it did for the ex-addicts who hover about him
constantly these days. Like them, his arms, covered with tattoos of
bare-breasted women, display the track marks of decades of heroin
injections. He wants the scars to be his last.

To Garcia, the singing and praying and preaching that come with this new
rehab program is "weird, 'cause I'm not used to it."

"At the last place I went in for rehab, it was like they were just doing a
job, just getting a check. But I see everybody here -- they're not faking
it. I want to feel like they feel."