Faith-Based Recommendations the Obama Team Hasn't Posted
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
President-elect Barack Obama's transition cochairman John Podesta has vowed "to make this the most open and transparent transition in history," but no details of the transition team's many meetings with religious groups have been posted on the transition website, change.gov—nor have the policy recommendations submitted by those groups been posted.
In fact, type in terms like Christian, Catholic, or Methodist on the transition site's search page for tracking meetings with outside groups and documents that have come in, and the only result that comes up is a link to an "Interfaith Immigration Meeting" on December 19. The link leads to a page with no information, on which the "Documents" and "Attendees" sections are blank.
As I've reported, the transition team has hosted more than a dozen meetings with faith-based groups. Policy recommendations from those groups are mounting in the transition team's in box. Since the transition team ain't posting them, I'll be posting some of the more interesting ones.
The first is from a key coalition of progressive religious organizations working to reduce poverty, called the Interreligious Working Group on Domestic Human Needs. The coalition, which includes the National Council of Churches—itself a coalition of dozens of Christian denominations—the United Methodist Church, and the Union for Reform Judaism, has also had a sit-down meeting with the Obama transition team.
The group has submitted a memo of urgent priorities for the Obama administration to take to reduce poverty very quickly after taking office, without waiting for congressional action. You can view it here.
- Read more about Obama's religious outreach
- Read more by Dan Gilgoff .
Tags: Barack Obama | religion | Obama administration | Obama transition
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Reader Comments
Who are you?
Kim Kaufman of CA, it would be a bad mistake not to take God into consideration when it comes to government, espicially ours. Washington was a Mason, but had a very poor attendance record for something that only promoted brotherhood and social interactions. Franklin was a Deist during his early life, but in his autobiography we can see that he attributed all of his success to God. An act that a true Deist wouldn't do because God, according to Deists, merely watched humanities actions and did not interfere. The list of founders goes on.
As for religions not having to pay taxes, who would you be taxing? The believers? Well you tax them already without having to be a member of a religion. The pastors and leaders? The only reason they receive a paycheck is because that is their job. Almost all offerrings and tithes go to missions, those in need, or benefitting the church in some way.
Also, most of the people in America are religious, so it would behoove Obama to pay attention to these groups.
wonder why Obama is not making these meetings public. This list of demands seems pretty good -- and I am against mixing church and state. But it's a lot more in line with the concerns these tax-free religionists should be having than from the previous administration (gay marriage, abortion, war-mongering end times nonsense).
Dan Gilgoff Responds
I find it intriguing that Richard Pierard wants to shut down the WH Office of Faith Based Initatives partly because "it is harmful to the churches involved." It's an argument that's often lost in the left's criticism of Faith Based Initiatives, which is usually predicated on protecting the state from the church. In crafting the First Amendment, the founders seem more concerned with protecting churches from government.
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