Last year, the Reverend Irv Cummings of Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Harvard Square preached at a Homelessness Marathon Vigil Service. His sermon, published in SPARE CHANGE (one of the nation's first street newspapers to benefit the homeless, published every other week by the Homeless Empowerment Project in Cambridge), responded to the claim made by a representative from the local Small Property Owners Association that clergy should not concern themselves with housing issues. Cummings speaks to the centrality of offering hospitality to the poor in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Inspired by the recent push for faith-based initiatives, much has been written on the role of faith communities in providing social services, including for the homeless. Apart from church/state issues, there is also considerable question whether most churches have the capacity to administer large government grants. John McCarthy and Jim Castelli wrote a report for the Nonprofit Sector Research Fund of the Aspen Institute called "Religion-Sponsored Social Service Providers: The Not-So-Independent Sector." A good summary of their findings appeared in the newsletter SNAPSHOTS (August 1999), which can be downloaded from the Aspen Web site. They focus not on legal issues but on identifying what faith communities do well -- emergency services, referrals, projects that are labor-intensive rather than capital-intensive -- and what their limitations are.