Faith, Welfare, and the City: The Mobilization of Religious Organizations for Neoliberal Ends

Studies of neoliberalism have focused on the rollback/rollout nature of the process as it manifests in different urban geographies. According to this narrative, neoliberalism and its proponents mobilize to roll back Keynesian or socialist institutions, while simultaneously or subsequently mobilizing a rollout of institutions that might reproduce a neoliberal social order in the future. Somewhat lost in this narrative, with its emphasis on the creation of new neoliberal institutions, is the role of existing institutions as vehicles of neoliberalism. This study focuses on the way that gospel rescue missions function as vehicles of neoliberalism within the present context in the United States. Gospel rescue missions, most of which predate the neoliberal turn, provide a form of care for America's urban homeless that emphasizes personal responsibility (and failure), and de-emphasizes the structural causes of homelessness. Many require their clientele to attend chapel before receiving services, and most shun government funding whenever possible. Although this approach is not explicitly motivated by neoliberalism, such organizations are willing vehicles of the neoliberally inspired individualization of poverty and homelessness. But importantly, this relationship has an incredibly uneven geography, as three case studies show. The unevenness of this geography complicates the picture considerably, belying any simple description of (or dismissal of) faith-based agencies as vehicles of neoliberalism.