Free government cash grant

Ever thought about taking a job working abroad in the developing world? Well, first answer three small questions:

* Do you believe that the Bible is "inspired, infallible and totally authoritative"?

* Do you believe in the personality of Satan, "which is the Devil" (Revelation 20:2)?

* Do you believe the rich and poor of this world can find salvation "by grace alone through faith in Christ"?

If you do, that's fine. Happily, you are free in Britain to choose your religion. But if you don't, you may be refused a job with a charity whose development projects are funded by the taxpayer. A close friend was asked just such questions when she applied recently for several jobs in UK development. Evangelical charities commonly demand a commitment to their "core values", which, to some eyes, are both fundamentalist and extreme.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have become big business and the "faith-based" ones in particular are experiencing the greatest boom. In the US, where an evangelical Christian sits in the Oval Office and where evangelicals are defining a new interventionist foreign policy, two organisations alone, World Vision US and Catholic Relief Services, have had their annual budgets doubled in ten years to a combined annual total of more than a billion dollars.

But what is interesting is not just the undeniable revival of religious fervour, but that globally this expansion has been fuelled by public cash.

In Britain, for example, the total income of World Vision UK, famous for its child sponsorship programme and haunting adverts, has grown from 17m [pounds sterling] when Tony Blair took office to nearly 33m [pounds sterling] last year (2002). Its accounts show a big increase in voluntary donations. They also show a dramatic rise in government grants from 4.3m [pounds sterling] in 1998 to 9.4m [pounds sterling] in 2002.

Most staff at World Vision would be proud to regard their work as a Christian mission, but insist both that it serves all the needy, regardless of their religion, and that it does not proselytise.

Try asking for a job with World Vision, however, and you will have to be "fully in sympathy" with its internationally agreed core values which, besides recognising the need to be sensitive to local diversity, include both a belief in the infallibility of the Bible and a commitment that salvation comes only through Christ.

The organisation's UK website declares: "We bear witness to the redemption offered only through faith in Christ ... We share our discovery of eternal hope in Christ."

Such beliefs reveal World Vision's essential missionary aim. Anyone who believes salvation can come only through turning to Christ must logically regard normal development work as secondary to the mission of helping the poor find a Christian salvation.

World Vision is not the only evangelical Christian group to benefit from state largesse. Figures from the Department for International Development (DfID) show that Tearfund, which declares that job applicants "must be committed to Tearfund's evangelical Christian beliefs", receives 870,000 [pounds sterling] from the department towards a total of 3.2m [pounds sterling] in official grants that helped it achieve a record income in the year to March 2003. The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra), the worldwide humanitarian arm of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, and Christian Outreach--Relief and Development (Cord), where staff are required to be committed Christians and "participate in the spiritual life of the team", received smaller sums. Cord's figures to the end of 2002 show that it received more than 2.4m [pounds sterling] in official grants, compared with only 617,000 [pounds sterling] in voluntary donations.

Despite their missionary bent, all these groups employ teams of idealistic people who do extremely good work. All are registered with and regulated by the Charity Commission. I question only why, as non-equal-opportunities employers, they should receive a single pound of taxpayers' money. This is not just subsidising unfair employment practices: such subsidies also threaten the organisations' independence and purpose.

Evangelical charities are just one illustration of the new world of NGOs in which ,non-government' is increasingly a misnomer. The term non-governmental organisation" emerged from the UN Charter of 1945 and, by its strict UN definition, includes almost anything outside government, whether for-profit business enterprises or mutual-aid groups such as trade unions. More recently, it has come to be used for voluntary and autonomous groups that exist for some social or economic purpose other than self-interest. Most are registered as charities, though some choose not to be.

Here is the problem. In Britain, there are roughly 185,000 registered charities (excluding schools, universities and research centres) with an annual income of 15.6bn [pounds sterling] each year, including 4,100 that have individual incomes of more than 1m [pounds sterling]. All enjoy virtually tax-free status. On average they now receive about as much money from the taxpayer (about one-third of their income) as they do in voluntary donations.

Look at one of Britain's best-run charities, Oxfam, which has become a major UK government contractor. Last year, Oxfam's accounts showed an income of 190m [pounds sterling], of which roughly 40m [pounds sterling] came from government, EU and United Nations grants, 74m [pounds sterling] from donations, and 65m [pounds sterling] from the charity's shops and trading.

Closer inspection of the figures reveals that the government money is even more significant than it appears. "Fundraising costs" swallow up about 20m [pounds sterling] of income from donations while "trading costs" take away 55m [pounds sterling] from the shops. This leaves 115m [pounds sterling] for charitable work, though this includes a further 30m [pounds sterling] in "support costs" and for management. Taxpayers' money therefore funds almost half of Oxfam's actual development projects. This huge dependence on the government threatens the independence of an organisation such as Oxfam, part of whose remit is to campaign and advocate for the poor.

Whilst many NGOs, including Oxfam, work hard to keep their ideals intact, the slush funds from Whitehall, Brussels and Geneva are a corrupting force that can do nothing hut provide an incentive to distort the priorities of otherwise good organisations.

In Egypt NGOs are popularly known as "fax-writes", as the primary mission is considered not to be to communicate in Arabic with their supporters (they have none), but instead to concentrate on mastering the sort of English-language reports that they realise their donors will love. Many charities do great work representing and standing up for the dispossessed, but their connection to the 'voiceless" is becoming increasingly fragile. The world's homeless or poor have no "membership" or voting rights on the boards of organisations that claim to represent them.

In fact, most of Britain's NGOs are run by groups of trustees who simply appoint their successors. If the source of their funding is guaranteed by the state (or if the charity acquires great volumes of savings or assets), then it begins to lose the incentive to keep in touch with its voluntary supporters.

Even some of the best-known international NGOs can be elitist and undemocratic. Take the international Committee of the Red Cross. The work of its brave staff costs 800 million Swiss francs a year, which comes almost entirely from governments. Yet few realise that the Red Cross is not an "international organisation", as it is normally labelled, nor even an "international committee", but simply a private Swiss body. According to Article 7 of its statutes, the committee will "co-opt its Members from among Swiss citizens". Non-Swiss have no power.

Mahatma Gandhi argued that the voluntary organisations he founded should not even own the buildings where they were based. He argued that the best form of NGOs, or what he called "public institutions", should live ill a state of financial crisis so that they be continually required to adapt to the demands of the members they served. In his autobiography he wrote: