The Political Side of Obama's Faith-Based Office

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

A Saturday New York Times story looks back at George W. Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and notes a curious innovation in President Obama's faith-based office. It's led mostly by campaign operatives, as opposed to folks with policy-heavy or academic backgrounds:

During the Bush years, a chasm often seemed to separate the officials devoted to the aims of the religion-based initiative from political strategists in the White House. No such chasm exists in the Obama White House. The executive director of the current partnership office, Joshua DuBois, a Pentecostal minister, was an aide to Mr. Obama in the Senate, served as religious affairs director for his presidential campaign and appears to enjoy his confidence. Mr. DuBois's staff is heavily weighted with campaign veterans.

Such political muscle could very well mean a much more effective channel for religious voices in administration policymaking. Or it could mean a familiar, though probably subtler, effort to woo religious leaders for electoral reasons. Or, of course, both.

DuBois, who leads Obama's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, has a couple years of Capitol Hill experience but is much better known for having led the Obama presidential campaign's robust faith outreach operation.

Mara Vanderslice, the faith-based office's liaison to Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is a political operative who pioneered faith outreach for the Democrats after the 2004 election.

Mark Linton, who heads the faith-based office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, served as Obama's Catholic outreach guru during last year's campaign.

The list goes on.

I haven't heard anyone who's working with Obama's faith-based office complain that its staff has politicized its work. But the office is clearly engaged in religious outreach, work critics say is politically oriented and that some Bush veterans say was more the province of the White House Office of Public Liaison during the terms of Obama's predecessor.

As Peter Steinfels of the Times writes, Obama's arrangement could reflect a stronger religious voice in policymaking and an effort to woo religious leaders for electoral reasons.

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