It was religion day at the White House. Shortly after 9am, the president spoke at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. He detailed his own history with religion highlighting the diversity in his own family, a Muslim father who became an atheist, “grandparents who were non practicing Methodists and Baptists and a mother who was skeptical of religion.” Repeating the themes of his campaign, he talked about the role his work as a community organizer and how his connections with faith communities in Chicago led him to Christianity. He expressed confidence in faith-based groups working at the grass roots level to have their fingers on the pulse of people’s needs. These groups, he said are trusted by the community.
Later, the President signed an Executive Order slightly modifying Bush’s 2001 order which established what was then called the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives and establishing a “President’s Advisory Council for Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnership.” The Executive Order, and White House comments on the priorities of the new Council and the list of initial members, are likely to raise concerns within the progressive religious community and among women leaders.
Perhaps most disturbing is the President’s backpedaling on his campaign assurance that “If you get a Federal grant you can’t use that money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them or the people you hire on the basis of their religion.”
According to Joshua DuBois, the 26-year-old Pentecostal minister who will staff the Council, the President is taking a more nuanced position on both these issues. Rather than prohibiting proselytizing and non discrimination in hiring, the Executive Order authorizes the director to seek guidance from the Department of Justice on specific issues of “how to respect the Constitution and the application of non-discrimination laws. Groups concerned about these issues will need to be vigilant in insisting that such opinions are actually sought; they can have some confidence that if such matters do find their way to the Office of Legal Counsel in the DOJ, that they will be handled fairly and non-politically, as it is scheduled to be headed by Dawn Johnsen, an attorney with a well-deserved reputation as being respectful of the rule of law and who has substantial experience in reproductive health law.
The “case by case” approach to questions of proselytizing and discrimination are particularly noteworthy given what could be considered a conflict of interest by several members of the Council who represent government-funded religious organizations but who have questionable hiring practices of, and restrictions against adoption by, GLBT persons; or have refused to provide clients with referrals for family planning, emergency contraception or abortion.
These issues are even more important as the president has endowed the Office with a bully pulpit on several controversial issues. One of its four priorities will be “Examining ways to support women and children, address teen pregnancy and reduce the need for abortion.” It is hard to understand why the president has added these controversies into the Faith Based Offices portfolio unless one concludes, as many in the progressive religious community have, that it is anti-gay, anti-choice “progressives” that have the ear of the President.
And, when one looks at the first set of councilors appointed, this suspicion is heightened. Of the 15 named members of what is projected to be a 25 person council, 9 are either clergy or represent faith organizations. I’ll concentrate on this group. Only one is a woman (the first AME woman bishop, Vashti M. McKenzie), three are African American male clergy, and, at the risk of ageism, I must note that all three are in their 70s. Only one, the Rev. Otis Moss Jr, is progressive.
Of course evangelicals are well represented by Jim Wallis and Joel Hunter, both of whom are prominent backers of the shaky ground approach to gay marriage and reproductive health and likely to use the Council not only to push this approach but to see that it gets government funding. The big guns in the government funding business have their seats secured, with World Vision represented by its CEO Richard Stearns and Catholic Charities by Father Larry Snyder.
About 70% of Catholic Charities’ budget comes from government grants so they have a big stake in the game. World Vision has a 1.6 billion dollar budget and gets 27% of it from the US and other governments. Rounding out the group are the two non-Christians, the ubiquitous Rabbi David Saperstein who seems to be the only Jew the US government knows (pace, David, no insult intended) and Eboo Patel whose interfaith youth work eminently qualifies him for this body.
Can progressives expect that this Council will advance a progressive agenda—whether in terms of its original misguided mandate of ensuring that religious groups working on humanitarian agenda get their “fair share” at the government table or in the the expanded mandate of “addressing” (note, not reducing) teen pregnancy and the incidence of abortion? (To talk about reducing teen pregnancy would require accepting that teens need more than abstinence-only education or that teens might actually have healthy and holy sex).
Well, like Obama’s mama, I am skeptical. It may be one step forward from the Bush administration’s desire to fund the religious right and defund the religious left, but it is a step backward from creating the level playing field in which religion participates in public life without special privilege and following the same rules the rest of us do.
Tags: abortion, abstinence-only, faith-based initiatives, obama administration, reproductive rights, sex education
I must agree with Ms. Kissling's skeptical view toward the president's obsession with continuing a failed program. Although I gather from her ageist innuendo that my advanced age probably disqualifies me as a commentator, I am convinced she hits the nail on the head. Although I supported Obama for president and continue to do so, he is not interested in listening to people like me, an old-fashioned Baptist who thinks separation of church and state is good for both institutions. His committee sounds like window dressing that will serve to cover up what is almost certain to be a venture that will go off on the wrong track. Progressive thinking folks have every reason to be dubious as to its merit and intentions. I certainly am.
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