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114 chapter six Religious Neoliberalism as Default It has been more than five years since Hurricane Katrina demolished much of the physical and social infrastructure of New Orleans, but it remains for some a symbolic epicenter of religious neoliberalism, as the federal government famously turned to religious entities—places of worship and religious organizations —to deal with the human devastation wrought by the storm. The reliance on these entities was passive at first (the federal government was simply not doing what it had done in the past, so such groups picked up the slack), then systematic—once pressured into acting, the federal government positioned itself as a clearinghouse and voice for religious groups. The events surrounding Hurricane Katrina thus constitute a symbolically powerful instance of religious neoliberalism, one that helps reinforce the central ideas of this book. On Monday, August 29, 2005, much of the world tuned in to watch one of the most surreal televised broadcasts of a “natural” disaster ever captured. As Hurricane Katrina bore down on the city of New Orleans, cameras captured initially very typical scenes of reporters in rain ponchos on abandoned piers trying to show viewers how windy and rainy hurricanes can be. But as the eye of the storm moved away and the clouds began to part, the scene turned to one of collective horror as broadcasts showed people atop buildings begging for their lives, and a government that seemed unable or unwilling to help. Almost a month later, Michael Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (fema) and now disgraced icon of the debacle , was called before the U.S. Congress to testify on what had gone wrong (Brown 2005). If his initial response to the storm had seemed irresponsible and incompetent, the tenor of his response during the congressional testimony had taken on a certainty rooted more in ideology than in fecklessness. His comments seemed to affirm the growing chorus of critics who had framed the government nonresponse as a “violation of the social contract” or ideologically motivated social Darwinism. If the people of New Orleans were too ignorant to Religious Neoliberalism as Default • 115 leave the city before the storm hit, then it was their fault that they were trapped. But there was something else in these statements that did not receive nearly as much attention by critics, then or since: his invocation of churches and religious organizations like the Salvation Army as the “proper” first responders in such disasters. This sentiment is intriguing, not least because if Brown was simply revealing a hidden ideological inclination for neoliberalism, his response about why the government behaved the way it did would likely echo this position , especially with the benefit of afterthought and the enormous political cover offered by neoliberal think tanks who were crafting such a position. What does it say about the politics of neoliberalism if faith-based organizations (not charities more broadly) are postulated as idealized alternatives to a government safety net? Why, in other words, invoke the benefits of organizations that might not fit the largely secular plank of neoliberalism as articulated through its forefathers like Hayek and Friedman or their institutional offspring like the cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute (aei), and the Heritage Foundation? The latter collectively issued hundreds of press releases after Hurricane Katrina arguing simply that responding to the aftermath was not the government’s responsibility, with little or no mention of how churches and religious organizations might be of assistance. Why would Brown not simply invoke nonprofits in a more general sense, like cato, aei, and the Heritage Foundation did? Why single out religious institutions as the “proper” first responders? Was Brown demonstrating a more complicated politics than the classic narrative of neoliberalism? Or was he simply backtracking—trying to show that he had had a plan after all—when faced with the question of why his office so publicly and completely failed? Or was the type of “solution” (fbos, as Brown suggested) a mere afterthought to the central goal of fema, namely, minimizing or eliminating the federal government’s role in such tragedies? Given the large number of articles, books, essays, and reports written about the U.S. government’s role in post-Katrina New Orleans, it is somewhat surprising that this particular angle has not been covered at length. This chapter attempts to discern the role of faith in the neoliberal reconstruction of post-Katrina New Orleans. The years since the event have yielded a large body of literature...

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