Recently in Faith-Based Initiative Category

The OFANP Advisory Council has been meeting in D.C. the past couple of days, hearing reports from its various task forces. In his account over on WaPo's GinG, William Wan notes that although the contentious hiring issue has been formally taken off the Board's plate and assigned to the lawyers, questions about it were nonetheless voiced yesterday. Specifically, a representative of the ACLU "got up to make a pointed statement near the end about the legal implications of allowing World Vision, a Christian group focused on helping children, to hire [to government funded positions] based on religious views." (World Vision president Richard Stearns, who serves on the Council, announced a couple of days ago that the organization has had to lay off 4-5 percent of its U.S. workforce.)

Now one might suppose that the hiring issue is so contentious because those engaged in the discussions are divided into two implacably opposed camps: strict church-state separationists and faith-based providers. But in fact that's not the case. There's a significant group of professionals--lawyers, social scientists, and service provider types--who 1) are concerned about letting faith-based providers use religious criteria to discriminate in hiring for government-funded jobs; 2) recognize the difficulties in strictly separating functions in many faith-based organizations; and so 3) are willing to agree to reasonable compromises. The problem is that faith-based advocates like Stearns have thus far signalled no such willingness--or if they have, no one I've talked to is aware of it.

Under the circumstances, why not let the Advisory Council actually try to address the issue? Unlike, say, abortion of same-sex marriage, faith-based hiring is eminently accessible to common ground solutions, and it should not be beyond the capacity of sophisticated insiders to work them out.

Anyone interested in following the fortunes of Son of Faith Based: the Obama Years needs to download "Taking Stock: The Bush Faith-Based Initiative and What Lies Ahead," a Pew-sponsored report of the Rockefeller Institute of Government's Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy released this month. Author David J. Wright gives provides a fine (if at times understated) narrative of the Initiative since it was just a twinkle in John Ashcroft's eye, including the extent of the Bush administration's embedding of the thing in the federal administrative machinery, largely without congressional warrant. As Wright puts it:

Whatever the future may hold, however, and whether or not one agrees with the policy objective, the methodical character, breadth, depth and scale of the Bush Faith-Based Initiative mark it as a remarkable example of executive action.

Would that the Bushies had devoted half so much attention to, say, post-Katrina or Iraq reconstruction. That said, the actual impact of the Bush initiative--in terms of shifting the weight of social service provision towards faith-based organizations (FBOs)--was negligeable. Those FBOs that saw their share of the pie increase were the big regional and national agencies, not those at the congregational, municipal, or even statewide levels. So maybe, in the end, this was just another example of Bushian ineffectuality.

Apart from the details, what's striking is how the Initiative came to define the Bush administration as religion--besotted. It proved a boon for secularist groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which saw their membership rolls swell during the Bush years. Probably nothing did more to strengthen the Democratic Party's hand with non-religious voters.

Congrariwise, the Obama administration has hung its own faith-based shingle from the White House to assure the religious that it feels their faith. And it has studiously avoided taking sides in the single most contentious aspect of the Initiative: allowing FBOs to hire only their own religious kind if they so choose. This tangled question now lies buried deep within the bowels of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, awaiting resolution even as the Initiative rolls on, with different rules applying to different federal programs depending on how the relevant provisions of particular laws and executive orders were written.

For example, the Workforce Investment Act, which comes up for reauthorization this year, was only temporarily extended last time because Congress refused to go along with providing the FBO hiring discrimination exemption that the Bush administration wanted. Perhaps the Obama adminstration will dodge the issue by just plumping for the status quo ante. That won't be so easy next year, however, when Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), the major federal program for the poor, itself comes up for renewal. TANF was where the country started down the current faith-based road, and it comes with the FBO hiring exemption. There will be major Democratic opposition to continuing the exemptions. WWOD--What Will Obama Do?

Say what you like about, George W. Bush's Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives had a real public policy commitment; to wit: "Our Vision is to educate and assist new and existing Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to apply and qualify for competitive Federal Funding." Before his administration was run over by the events of 9/11, George Bush's most notable--only notable?--policy commitment was to enable religious organizations to put their faith-based shoulders to the public wheel with the help of government funds. He hired the country's most distinguished academic advocate of faith-based social service provision, John DiIulio, to run the office, and though DiIulio soon departed in anger, federal legislation hit a wall, and the operation became mired in partisan political finagling (see David Kuo's Tempting Faith), the animating vision of the thing remained in place.

So it was natural that, when Barack Obama announced that he would continue the office under new management, the assumption was that it would have basically the purpose in mind, only in a Democratic way. (For example, on the bitterly contested issue of whether FBOs could discriminate in hiring for publicly funded positions, candidate Obama said no way.) After all, the Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships sounds like just another name for the same thing.

But now, in the sixth month of the new administration's existence, it is becoming clear that it bears only a passing a resemblance to its predecessor. For starters, a large amount of its energy has been spent on creating and managing a 25-person Advisory Board whose mission (according to  William Wan's GinG account of its conference call last week) is "to find ways faith groups and government can work together on issues ranging from climate change to fatherless families to abortion rates."

In fact, there's nary a mention of faith-based social service provision as such, the Bush office's raison d'etre. The hiring issue has been off-loaded onto the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The bottom line is that Obama has turned the office into a broad-gauged exercise in religious outreach, including on the international front. "Neighborhood" is pretty much a dodge. What we've really got is, simply, an Office of Faith-Based Partnerships.

Over at CT Politics, Douglas Koopman is unhappy with the Obama administration's faith-based initiative so far. A political science prof at Calvin College, Koopman is one of those center-right evangelical types who was disappointed at the politicizing of the Bush effort but nevertheless remains an enthusiast of the approach. His is not the clearest exposition ever committed to writing, but the bottom line is that he thinks DuBois and company have been distracted by extraneous responsibilities like whomping up the OFANP advisory council and finding the Obamas a new church (how's that going?). And then there's that annoying hiring issue.

Koopman thinks the Obamaites underestimated Democratic opposition to following the Bush rules on permitting religious groups to limit government-funded hiring to their own kind--and expects that the new lawyer-run approach will chip away at what he calls their "rights to use religious criteria in hiring decisions." I'm inclined to agree. What's missing from his discussion--and from most of its ilk--is the acknowledgement that while no one objects to religious bodies hiring their own kind for their own purposes with their own money, many have a real problem with letting them do so for public purposes with public money.

Pastordan is a bit befuddled by Michelle Boorstein's God in Government post reporting that the Advisory Council of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFANP) is not, after all, going to take up the thorny faith-based hiring issue. Since I reported a month ago that the Council was going to take it up, let me attempt some clarification. Back when OFANP was created, its director, Joshua DuBois, was widely quoted as saying that the hiring issue would be handled on "a case-by-case" basis. Indeed, DuBois said that to me on the record. (Unfortunately, he's now not speaking on the record to reporters except after being cleared to do so by the White House office for clearing officials to speak with reporters.)

It made no sense to me at the time, and makes no sense to me now, how a case-by-case approach can be conducted without an actual articulation of what the new administration's policy on the subject was. On what basis will cases be decided? During the campaign, Obama declared, simply, that there should be no discriminatory hiring by faith-based providers for government funded positions. Clearly, the White House has decided to walk that back--and quite apart from the politics, this is a more complicated question than some like to think. Anyway, a month ago I had it from a high White House source that the Council's task force on "reform of the faith-based office" would be taking up the hiring issue. Now, as Boorstein reported, that won't happen.

Why? My guess it has to do with a recognition of the legal complexities involved, the distance between Council members on the issue, and, one hopes, a recognition that this is for the administration itself to decide. One question worth pursuing with Jim Wallis and other center-right types who want to preserve the Bush permission for faith-based hiring discrimination is this: What kind of compromise would you be open to? Thus far, all I have seen is a willingness to refrain from proselytizing with government funds and an interest in proceeding via vouchers, such that the client gets to decide whether she wants a faith-based or secular program. But on the hiring issue per se, nada.

Dan Gilgoff has canonized the battle over commongroundism in a useful piece in U.S. News. On his account, it's religious progressives v. religious lefties, with the latter (Schultz, Laarman & Co.) portrayed as ideological hardheads. I'm not sure I'd cast it quite the same way, however.

Substantively, the commotion is mostly about abortion, with some skirmishing over gay marriage and the hiring question in the Obama version of George Bush's faith-based initiative. The "progressives" are for the most part pro-life, anti-gay marriage, and in favor of the Bush rule letting faith-based service providers restrict their government-funded hiring to their own religious kind. The lefties are pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and opposed to faith-based hiring. But on issues like poverty and healthcare reform, there's been no conflict to speak of, although Laarman did let loose a broadside on the economic agenda of the "faux progressives" a couple of weeks ago.

Behind the substantive disputes, what's going on (I'm tempted to say, what's really going on) is a struggle for turf within the Obama administration. Despite his Mainline Protestant affiliation, faith, and moral values, the president has, since the beginning of his campaign, devoted the bulk of his faith-based energies to wooing such evangelicals as have been willing to overlook his liberal social views.

The 15 announced members of the advisory council of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood include a bunch of evangelicals but nary a white mainliner, and of the remaining 10 yet to be named, the two that have leaked are both socially conservative evangelical types--author Donald Miller and former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy. "Who's next, Chuck Colson?" snorted Pastordan when Dungy's name surfaced. "My Lord, they should just come out and admit the obvious: the Council is a colony for socially-conservative Evangelicals established as a reward for their help in 2008. What bullshit."

The balance of the council is supposed to be announced any time now, so we'll see soon enough what the entire colony looks like. Meanwhile, efforts are underway to connect the president directly with more liberal Protestant personages. This game ain't over yet.

Correction: I'm persuaded that it's not accurate to describe the commongroundniks as mostly pro-life. Some are, and some aren't. And whether some who say they are, like Jim Wallis, favor overturning Roe v. Wade and criminalizing the practice, is unclear. What they are as a group is determined to avoid taking a position, at least institutionally, beyond supporting social policies and legislative remedies that, they think, should earn the support of both sides.

Whatever happened to the president's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships? After being created with considerable fanfare and three-fifths of its outside advisory council on February 5, it retreated into the White House woodwork. Director Joshua DuBois, administration factotum for all things religious, was charged with helping the First Family find a church. (Still waiting on that one.)

But OFANP is about to reemerge. The rest of the advisory council will be announced shortly, and the full body will gather at the White House early next month. Together with selected others, it will be divided up into task forces dealing with each of the office's specified areas of concern: the role of community organizations in economic recovery; fatherhood and healthy families; reducing the "need for abortions"; and international interreligious dialogue. There is also expected to be a task force relating to energy and climate change, and (yes) one that will take up the thorny legal groundrules under which the Obama faith-based programming will operate. Let the faith-based committeework begin!

O to be a fly on the wall when the Concerned Women of America and allies meet with Joshua DuBois and the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships gang at the White House. Brody's got the story, and via a CWA email to him it's clear that these paladins of the Religious Right will come loaded for bear. As in:

The Obama administration says they want to be inclusive and represent all Americans. The White House faith-based office is now tasked with reducing the number of abortions - something that pro-life groups have very good experience in accomplishing. Pregnancy resource centers and regulations on abortion have a terrific track record in helping women choose alternatives to abortion. Funding abortion or abortion providers is one of the worst things that could be done. What the government funds, we get more of. We hope to begin a dialogue that results in policies which actually work, not just financially benefit certain interest groups like abortion providers.

Colson really really wants to be able to hire only his own kind, with government money. Christ is all he's got to offer, sezee. Your tax dollars at work? See Gilgoff's report.

Last July 1, when he announced that he would continue President Bush's faith-based office in the White House on bigger and better terms, Barack Obama said:

But what we saw instead was that the Office never fulfilled its promise. Support for social services to the poor and the needy have been consistently underfunded. Rather than promoting the cause of all faith-based organizations, former officials in the Office have described how it was used to promote partisan interests. As a result, the smaller congregations and community groups that were supposed to be empowered ended up getting short-changed.

Well, I still believe it's a good idea to have a partnership between the White House and grassroots groups, both faith-based and secular. But it has to be a real partnership - not a photo-op. That's what it will be when I'm President. I'll establish a new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The new name will reflect a new commitment. This Council will not just be another name on the White House organization chart - it will be a critical part of my administration.

So, at a time when the poor and needy are more at risk than they've been in decades, why does Obama's new Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFANP) seem to be missing in action? Three reasons suggest themselves:

1. Laws governing faith-based social service provision--including on employment--have turned out to be more complicated than the Obama apparat realized.

2. After eight years of George W. Bush, it has gotten harder to bring together those of diverse religious views on a common faith-based agenda.

3. Since the summer, the economic woes of the poor and needy have far outstripped the capacity of even a beefed-up White House faith-based office to deal with.

So President Obama rushed the promised office into place in time for the National Prayer Breakfast; watered down its mission by internationalizing it; installed his religious outreach guy at the top; created three-fifths of an advisory board; and waved the tough questions in the direction of the lawyers. And then got down to the real business of rescuing the economy.