The Washington Post ran an interesting article about the future of the office of Community and Faith Based Initiatives
Pointing to his spiritually-laced campaign rhetoric and outreach to religious groups, liberal faith-based organizations have high expectations that President-elect Barack Obama will increase funding for their activities and warmly welcome their lobbying on poverty, climate change and other issues.
<!–
var rn = ( Math.round( Math.random()*10000000000 ) );
document.write('‘) ;
// –>
But analysts across the ideological spectrum said that much of what the Obama administration might propose for faith-based organizations is unclear and that the new president could face legal challenges about whether religious groups can discriminate against gay people and those of religions other than their own in hiring.
Liberal faith groups among Catholics, Jews, mainline Protestants and progressive evangelicals have felt left out of efforts by President Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives over the past eight years and are looking forward to more attention from Obama.
posted November 9, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Requiring Faith based groups to hire persons that are apposed to their Faith Base would to State Interference with Church function. It would in effect create a Federal mandate to churches to subject themselves to Manna instead of God.
While I agree with churches working together for the common good of a community, to require that they hire people reject the principles of the church is just plain wrong. Obama and his aides can see that surly, they will allow some leeway in the end. He will find a compromise
posted November 10, 2008 at 11:03 am
Personally I do not see why churches, synagogues and other places of worship would even bother with this kind of connection with the government.
1) For conservatives who complain about the expansion of government programs, this is simply yet another government program to manage. That was what amazed me about its popularity earlier in the Bush administration. As conservatives were complaining about an expanding government, their churches were coming to the government with their hands out.
2) For liberal/progressives who complain about religious liberty and state/church lineblurring, this is a HUGE knotwork of potential conflicts. If the government requires adherence to laws that all other non-profits must follow, religious liberty may be infringed. If they do not, individual civil rights may be infringed. And then there is the whole question of who gets the money and how is accountability maintained?
This office should be closed. It serves no useful purpose other than to entwine church and state in ways that will inflame passions on both sides of the aisle.
posted November 11, 2008 at 2:56 pm
President Obama should cancel the entire faith-based initiatives–offices and programs–and restore the principle of separation of church and state as the operative principle of the constitutional approach to religious groups.
The next best approach would be to require nondiscriminatory hiring in any government funded activitity–no exceptions for churches or religious institutions. That should be conjoined with a firm requirement that there be clearly documented proof of the superior effectiveness of each “faith-based” program seeking refunding from the tax funds of the federal or state governments.