Can Obama Make Faith-Based Initiatives Stronger Than Under Bush?
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
In my story on President Obama's Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships rollout for usnews.com last week, I described the huge challenge that awaits the administration in deciding whether or not to allow religious groups to do faith-based hiring with federal funds. Groups on the left consider it state-sanctioned discrimination. Groups on the right consider it essential to allowing religious organizations to maintain their religious identity.
The piece noted that Obama is going to alienate a lot of important players in the faith-based world regardless of what he decides.
But with challenge comes opportunity. In my column for this week's digital U.S. News weekly, I argue that, if he can somehow succeed in satisfying both sides on the hiring question, Obama might leave the quintessential George W. Bush domestic program on firmer footing than he found it. Here's the gist:
In trying to satisfy both the religious groups that Bush brought into the White House and advocates of church-state separation, Obama faces a delicate balancing act. He could wind up alienating both camps. But if he can mollify church-state separation watchdogs with new limits on how faith-based funds are spent while also expanding the universe of religious groups involved, Obama just might make the Bush program stronger than before.
After Obama was elected, aides embarked on an intensive fact-finding mission to learn about faith-based initiatives under Bush and to collect ideas for improving (or fixing, as critics would say) the program. Obama's team met with dozens of groups with a stake in faith-based initiatives, from traditional social service providers like Catholic Charities USA to a constellation of new religious left groups to Bush White House veterans like [Stanley] Carlson-Thies [who helped design faith-based initiatives for Bush]. The team even powwowed with opponents of faith-based initiatives, including Jewish groups worried about state-supported Christianity.
The biggest question for Obama is how he'll handle Bush's policy of allowing faith-based groups to use religious background as a factor in hiring for government-funded positions. In announcing his faith-based office, Obama delayed a decision on the matter until further legal review. Advocates of church-state separation and liberal backers of faith-based initiatives view the Bush policy, which exempts religious groups from federal nondiscrimination rules attached to government funds, as illegal discrimination. Some religious groups and those on the right see it as an essential safeguard for faith-based organizations' rights to exercise religious convictions....
"If the message to religious groups is, you're welcome in the public square if you alter hiring practices and water down your religious identity, you're going to lose a lot of them," says Jim Towey, who directed faith-based initiatives under Bush...
With so many concerns on the left and the right, Obama will have to stay personally dedicated to faith-based initiatives for the program to survive, let alone thrive. "He's not going to find a lot of hard-core support in Congress," says Towey. But Obama has a personal connection to faith-based initiatives, having started out as a church-based community organizer. Which means the program that Bush instituted via executive order in 2001 to skirt Democratic opposition may have just found its strongest Democratic patron.
Read the full column.
- Read more by Dan Gilgoff.
- Read more about the Obama administration.
Tags: religion | Obama administration
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Reader Comments
Moral Fiber Lost
The biggest mistake this country ever made "separation of church and state" Has anyone bothered to look at the condition of this country or world for that fact.
From experience; I have attended both faith based and public education. There is no comparison as to the huge gap left in public schools and the lack of good education and moral conduct and just plain common courtesy and respect for others. Do you really need proof other than the discernible state of affairs of the public school system and academic state of spiraling ignorance graduating from our public school system. Money thrown at schools is not the answer.
Total denigration of the moral fabric of this country. Look what that has gotten us. Look around you. A country where anything goes and all paths lead to one end! Whats it gonna take as a wake up call people?? Armageddon????? Oops. To Late.
In the blink of an eye
Of course, you are always free to disagree and I will respect all opposing opinions to this matter, but just because you may not agree with these statements simply does not make them untrue.
Are we so eager to lay the burden on to another that we are to blind to see the real truth until it is to late?
Will the courage of the people come soon enough to turn this situation around? We may have this answer sooner than we think.
We should all pray for this country and it's people for it surely will take a great intervention for a u-turn now. Is your house in order?
Religious groups can (and do) serve without forcing faith on others
I think there is a misunderstanding of what many faith-based organizations do. The groups who are consulting Obama on this issue provide desperately needed social services, both domestically and internationally. It is illegal for these groups - even those who hire co-religionists - to "force their views" on anyone. These groups provide basic medical care, emergency food and water supplies, tutoring to at-risk students and empowerment to women. They do not preach, distribute religious materials or require any type of religious conversion from those they serve. They simply serve. This service is an extension and an expression of their faith -- and that expression is beneficial to society (regardless of the faith from which it flows). Allowing religious groups to serve others -- while maintaining their religious identity -- and while prohibiting any type of conversion activity -- is good for our country. It is not an establishment of a state religion - it is simply an acknowledgement of the good that the varied religions represented within the state can do for society as a whole.
"Wall of separation of church and state."
"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the,"wall of separation of church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society."
~Thomas Jefferson: Author of the Declaration of Independence; Third president of the United States of America; Co-author of the United States Constitution..............
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