Entries for July 2009

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

How many highly placed aides does the White House have regularly doing Catholic outreach or who have extensive backgrounds in such work? Five, by my count:

1. Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Executive Director Joshua Dubois, who regularly meets with Catholic groups, from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on down.
2. Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, who says he "talk[s] with the president about church teaching and the Catholic view on policy matters as they come up."
3. Mark Linton, who directed Catholic outreach for Obama's presidential campaign and who now serves as the administration's top liaison to Catholics. Officially, Linton directs the faith-based office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
4. Alexia Kelly, the recently hired director of the faith-based office at the Health and Human Services Department and cofounder of the progressive Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
5. John Kelly, who works in the faith-based office at the Corporation for National and Community Service and who was formerly the Democratic National Committee's Catholic outreach director.

My most recent God & Country column for U.S. News Weekly fleshes out Obama's robust Catholic outreach effort:

The Obama administration is taking its effort to promote responsible fatherhood, which it launched with a White House town hall event just before Father's Day, on the road, hosting a half-dozen town halls in the next few months in different parts of the country. The first event will happen in Chicago next Wednesday. It will feature a videotaped message from President Obama, a roundtable and networking session for local nonprofit groups, presentations by administration officials, and a panel of local dads, according to an adviser for the effort.

"Given who's in the White House, we have a chance to do some very powerful messaging and role modeling on fatherhood," says Judy Vredenburgh, president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, who is helping advise the effort. "This is a subject that the president feels strongly about, so we're moving in the momentum of Father's Day."

The Capitol Hill debate over abortion in the healthcare bill has kicked up a lot of confusion yesterday and today. Conservative antiabortion forces say the bill mandates federally subsidized abortion coverage. Democrats, including some abortion foes, say that's a mischaracterization.

Democrats claim an amendment to the healthcare bill adopted last night ensures that the tradition of denying federal funds for abortions—except in cases of rape or incest or if the pregnant woman's life is in danger—will continue. Republicans and traditional antiabortion advocates say that's bogus.

What's the reality?

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

It's striking that today's Associated Press profile of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate, excludes mention of his evangelical faith and strong ties to the evangelical world. I was struck by the same absence in a recent New York Times Pawlenty profile.

How solid are Pawlently's evangelical bona fides? The pastor of his home church is president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the nation's largest evangelical interest. Last year, as John McCain struggled to win over evangelical leaders, Pawlently quietly tried to arrange a meeting between the Republican presidential nominee and National Association of Evangelical bigs, but to no avail.

Around that time, the Minnesota Independent covered some of Pawlenty's faith-based policies: 

It's hard not to see the fingerprints of Pawlenty's pastor in his public policy initiatives. Much to the chagrin of other members of Minnesota's Republican Party, Pawlenty has recently had a come-to-Jesus moment on global warming—perhaps literally. Pawlenty has been championing strategies to reduce carbon emissions as chairman of the National Governors Association over the last year and half. Perhaps not coincidentally, [Leith] Anderson, Pawlenty's pastor, five years ago began encouraging evangelicals to get involved in global warming mitigation in order to preserve "God's gift of our earth." Pawlenty even appointed Anderson to his Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group.

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

This YouTube video explaining the etymological origins of the word Antichrist—hint: it has something to do with "Baraq O Bam-Maw"—has racked up more than 50,000 hits, with Hot Air reporting that it had risen to No. 6 on YouTube's "News & Politics" chart last night.

It was at this time last year that John McCain's presidential campaign released an ad that, according to some analyses, implied that Obama was the Antichrist. As Democrats like Obama have stepped up religious outreach, some opponents have stepped up faith-based demonizing.

Talk about bringing civility to the culture wars. Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign—the nation's biggest gay rights group—recently sat down with the pastor who spearheaded the religious community's push for California's Proposition 8 for a 90-minute get-to-know-you meeting.

Carrie Prejean's pastor, former NFL-er Miles McPherson, also attended.

"They won't pay for my surgery, but we're forced to pay for abortions," gripes a senior in this provocative new ad from Family Research Council Action. It will air in five states: Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, and Nebraska. "The ad urges opposition to a healthcare plan that will deny care to 'our greatest generation' and deny life to 'our future generation,' " FRC Action says in a news release.

It strikes me that the Family Research Council's anti-Obamacare blitz is aimed not only at derailing the Democrats but also at showing the GOP how helpful the group could be as the party wonders how much it should be relying on religious conservatives.