FAITH-BASED AID STIRS ZEAL, DEBATE

The men sit quietly in rows, holding their Bibles and listening to a
man speak reassuringly about the second coming of Jesus Christ.
"People are going to see Christ coming, and the souls of the dead are
going to be coming with him," Bill Thomson said. "We will all be with
Christ. All the believers."

The audience - some members just out of jail, others fresh off the
streets of Paterson - are riveted by the lecture. They ask questions
and highlight Scripture with yellow markers. A few say "amen."

This is not a church. It's Good Shepherd Mission, a Christian alcohol
and drug rehabilitation center - the kind of faith-based outreach that
President Bush promises to support with tax dollars.

Those promises - including a $600 million voucher plan - are at the
center of a growing national debate.

Bush, who credits his faith in Jesus with helping him quit drinking,
wants to put faith-based programs on an equal footing with secular
programs in the competition for public money.

The administration has proposed issuing vouchers to low-income people
for use at religious or secular treatment centers.

"The reality is that if you don't address the spiritual component of
their addiction, they are never going to recover, and we are throwing
all this public money down a rat hole," James Towey, head of the White
House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said in a
recent telephone interview.

A spiritual approach to treating addicts and alcoholics is nothing
new. Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs have long
preached the importance of seeking a "higher power" in recovery from
addiction, but they do not promote a specific vision of that power.

What makes the White House plan provocative is that it could provide
public money to religious groups whose central focus is winning
converts and who see addiction as a matter of sin, not disease.

Critics call it an audacious assault on the separation of government
and religion.

"Having taxpayers support what amounts to a religious conversion runs
counter to the Constitution," said Barry Lynn, executive director of
Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "This seems to be
a dramatic intrusion of church-state separation."

The plan is also alarming treatment providers in New Jersey, who fear
it will benefit unlicensed agencies that operate outside state
standards. And they question whether faith alone is enough.

Can religious ministries, some equipped only with Bibles and true
believers' zeal, offer a legitimate alternative to secular treatment
centers with trained counselors and social workers?

"Alcoholism and drug addiction are chronic diseases," said Jim
O'Brien, executive director of Addiction Treatment Providers of New
Jersey. "And chronic diseases require professional treatment."

Good Shepherd, for its part, has its own qualms about getting public
money.

Since 1930, the program has quietly provided a bed, a Bible, and an
indoctrination into evangelical Christianity for men desperate to
transform their lives.

And it has always raised its own cash. The Rev. Mike Vieira, the
director, said he fears government support would force him to water
down Good Shepherd's core Christian teachings. With a budget of only
$150,000, Vieira said he could use the extra money. But he has adopted
a wait-and-see attitude.

"What we do is wrapped up in our message," Vieira said. "And we don't
want to change our message."

Operating in an old mansion east of downtown Paterson, Good Shepherd
puts the Bible squarely at the center of its treatment plan. The men,
who live there for nine months, must finish a rigorous curriculum -
five classes a day - before trying to get jobs or schooling.

At a recent class, one of the teachers spoke about the consequences of
Adam's eating of the forbidden fruit in Genesis.

"God was in control of the Earth," said Thomson, who drives in once a
week from Morris County to teach the class. "Now it's Satan who is in
control of the Earth. Instead of being in a theocracy, we're in a
Satanocracy."

The fundamentalist vision of Christianity strikes a chord. Jose Luis
Hernandez, a Lodi man starting his third month at Good Shepherd, said
the program gives him hope.

Sitting behind the house, on a paved strip loaded with old exercise
equipment, he spoke about the love a believer feels when he discovers
Jesus and the shame he experiences if he returns to drugs and alcohol.

"It's like you're personally betraying Christ," he said. "You're
nailing him back to the cross."

Good Shepherd is far from alone in treating addiction with religion.
Teen Challenge, one of the largest faith-based groups, operates 168
centers nationwide, promoting a similarly evangelical vision of
Christianity. Bush spoke at a Teen Challenge facility in Iowa during
the 2000 campaign.

"We feel encouraged there are opportunities to help us enlarge," said
John Castellani, executive director of Teen Challenge. "We are looking
at this as a positive situation."

But experts are divided about whether the faith-based approach works
any better than secular methods, and the number of studies comparing
the two are limited.

Addiction specialists in New Jersey fear Bush's voucher plan will
undermine the professionalism they have struggled to build over
decades. Religious programs such as Good Shepherd operate as boarding
homes, and fall outside the voluminous regulations that govern the
licensing of residential treatment centers.

In New Jersey, those regulations, among other things, set educational
standards that treatment workers must meet - from graduate degrees to
certificates.

"To see the standards we have worked for get put aside for the
faith-based approach is unacceptable," said O'Brien, of Addiction
Treatment Providers of New Jersey. "This is a step backward."

Federal officials said they're working to alleviate those concerns.
They want the vouchers to cover both secular and faith-based programs,
but stress that there must be full disclosure of the methods,
credentials, and potential outcomes for each option. In the end, it
will be up to the states to come up with lists of approved providers.

"There are many pathways to recovery," said Charles G. Curie,
administrator of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration. "We want the states to develop this in a way
where there is a lot of information for the consumer. We want to make
sure the individual is able to make a good choice."

White House officials say the plan will come before Congress during
fiscal 2004 budget deliberations in the next several months. Towey
said it meets the constitutional standard set by the Supreme Court
last year in its ruling on a school voucher system in Cleveland.

"If it's voluntary, and people have a choice, then that meets the
test," he said.

He also said the White House has no preference for any treatment
programs. He cited a Jewish treatment center in Los Angeles as just
one of many possibilities.

"Our point is that if faith-based approaches give some people the help
they need, then we should be creating more choices for people," Towey
said. "There was an effort to exclude them from the mix, and the
president wants to put an end to this."

Critics believe the White House has another purpose in
mind.

"I think they'd like to privatize a large number of government
services to the poor," Lynn said. "And they've figured out one of the
cheapest ways to do that is to let religion undertake those services."

In the day-to-day routine of Bible classes, chores, and contemplation,
Vieira said, there is no simple solution to the struggles his clients
face.

"The people we work with, the world doesn't know what to do with," he
said. "We work with some people, as all programs do, year after year,
until somebody finally gets it, and then they go on."

Hernandez, the Lodi man who enrolled in Good Shepherd in April, said
this is not the first time he has sought help in Christ.

He embraced Christianity nearly a decade ago in a similar program in
Florida. He stayed off drugs for a while, but became an alcoholic, he
said. Before being dropped off at Good Shepherd by his pastor, he was
drinking half a case of malt liquor every day. During a recent Bible
study class, he raised his hand and spoke of a struggle inside him.

"I have my own old self, and I have the Holy Spirit," he said. "How do
I build up the Holy Spirit?"

The teacher, a younger man who went through the program, replied:
"Read the word. Pray. You have the power to overcome the situation."

No one on the seven-man staff has any formal training in counseling or
social work, Vieira said. But he stressed that all of them - including
himself - have graduated from Good Shepherd and have the same vision
and commitment.

"Our main objective here is not only just that the men get a job and
live a decent life," Vieira said. "It really is about eternity. Are we
successful as far as leading people in the right direction. so that
their eternity would be happy? I say we would be very successful."