Obama Transition Team Convenes Advisory Committee on Faith-Based Initiatives

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

With the Obama transition team staging a robust religious outreach campaign as part of its policy planning and agency review, one of the biggest questions emerging—and one over which there appears to be significant disagreement in Democratic ranks—is how Obama will turn President Bush's controversial Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives into his own White House Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

One major issue is exactly how Obama will alter the Bush-era exemption from complying with federal nondiscrimination hiring laws applied to faith-based groups receiving federal funds. That exemption allows Baptist groups to hire only Baptists, Catholic groups to hire just Catholics, etc. Some religious groups say they need that kind of discretion to fulfill their missions, even though they're not allowed to use federal dollars to underwrite religious worship, instruction, or proselytization.

As Americans United for Separation of Church and State Executive Director Barry W. Lynn put it to me in a phone call this week, "How does hiring only Baptists help you ladle the soup out better in a soup kitchen? If you hire people to run an educational program, what different does it make if that person is a Baptist or Jew?"

But a handful of religious groups raised concerns about striking down the nondiscrimination in hiring exemption when Obama announced his plans to do so this summer, as he rolled out his plan for remaking the current White House office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

To resolve some of these issues, the Obama campaign has convened an informal ad hoc advisory committee. "The President's Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships is not being created in a vacuum," committee member Paul Corts, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, writes me in an E-mail. "Our group is only an advisory ad hoc group invited to serve by the transition team, but we're very hopeful and optimistic. Our advisory group discussions have been wide ranging, robust, and with diverse views—but with civility. I think we're all grateful for President-elect Obama's commitment to build on the good work done during the Bush administration and to further strengthen partnerships."

I'll have more to report on the work of this committee, and the shape that Obama's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is taking, in the New Year.

• Read more about Obama's religious outreach.
• Read more by Dan Gilgoff.