After months of work, President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships has sent him a list of proposals on revamping the White House’s faith-based program. The proposals will also set priorities for the office and will renew debate — and media coverage — of this controversial initiative.

Polls show that the faith-based concept remains popular among the public, just as it was when the program began under Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. But church-state questions about how to funnel taxpayer dollars to religious institutions have bedeviled the White House program from the start. Obama campaigned on a pledge to bar funds from houses of worship that would use the money to proselytize or discriminate in hiring on the basis of a prospective employee’s religion and beliefs.

But those principles have proved difficult to codify in black-and-white regulations. As a result, Obama’s faith-based office has been accused on the one hand of allowing too much freedom for religious groups that receive federal funds, and on the other of not allowing religious groups enough leeway to use the funds as they see fit. Others have criticized the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships for not moving quickly enough given the state of the economy and the increasing social welfare needs, or for not giving faith leaders enough influence.

Certainly, the faith-based initiative that was a hallmark of the Bush White House is not going to disappear under Obama. In fact, the program will expand its mission to “foster interfaith dialogue with leaders and scholars around the world,” according to the White House news release in February 2009 announcing the revamped office. How that will play out for houses of worship and religious institutions across the country that provide social services is a topic of much debate, even after Obama approves or rejects the proposals being sent to him by the advisory council.

This edition of ReligionLink provides background on the debate, as well as resources and experts for covering the changing landscape of the faith-based initiative in the Obama administration.

Why it matters

Finding the proper balance in the relationship between church and state is one of the most difficult legal, political and cultural challenges in American society — and in many respects, the faith-based initiative is emblematic of that struggle. Moreover, in an economic crisis like the one the nation faces today, houses of worship and other religious institutions are considered critical to the social welfare of a growing number of people.

Quick links

• See a list of the six task force topics of concern and the 25 members and leaders of the Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, who serve one-year terms.
• Read about the mission of the OFBNP and find links to the four main policy goals of the office.
• See a Feb. 22, 2010, Washington Post online article about the council’s proposals. The piece includes a link to a document with the full 73-page report as well as an excerpt with some of the main points related to church-state issues.

The state of the debate

• Read “A Vision for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships,” an address by OFBNP head Joshua DuBois delivered on Feb. 18, 2010, at a conference at the Brookings Institution marking a decade of faith-based programs. The speech sets out the administration’s views on how the program will work.
• Read a Washington Post blog item the summarizes some of the presentations at the Brookings event.
• DuBois also defends and details the work of the faith-based office in this Feb. 4, 2010, video (with transcript) interview with David Brody of CBN and in this Feb. 3 blog post on the official Web site of the OFBNP.
• A Feb. 19, 2010, post by Cornell law professor Steven H. Shiffrin at the ReligiousLeftLaw blog argues that liberals should give religious groups more leeway in obtaining federal funding, in part because social service faith groups have been receiving such funds for more than 70 years with few problems.
• Read “White House faith office answers critics,” a Feb. 11, 2010, Religion News Service story in which DuBois counters criticisms.
• Read a Feb. 5, 2010, blog post by Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State titled “More Faith-Based Follies: One Year Later, Initiative Remains Plagued With Problems.” It includes a link to an op-ed by Americans United executive director Barry Lynn outlining the concerns of religious liberty advocates.
• Read “Faith-Based Anniversary: Has Anything Changed?” a Feb. 5, 2010, post at ReligionDispatches.org, which rounds up the criticisms of church-state groups such as the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination.
• Read a Feb. 4, 2010, story in The Wall Street Journal, “Keeping Faith, Courting Conservatives: Obama’s Willingness to Continue Bush Approach to Religious Charities Aims to Woo Evangelicals but Vexes Liberals.” The story discusses Obama’s decision to allow religious groups that receive taxpayer dollars to discriminate to some extent in hiring.
• Read a Feb. 3, 2010, Washington Post story, “Religious leaders worry that Obama’s faith council is for show,” timed for the first anniversary of Obama’s announcement that he was revamping the faith-based office. The story details concerns among faith leaders.
• A blog post related to the Washington Post story includes a number of quotations that did not make it into the print edition.
• In a Jan. 15, 2010, news release, William Donohue of the Catholic League called for the closing of the faith-based office because he said it discriminates against religious organizations.
• Read “Does anyone remember the faith-based initiative?” posted Jan. 8, 2010, by sociologist Mark Chaves at the Faith & Leadership site of Duke Divinity School. Chaves summarizes his research, based on the National Congregations Study, showing that federal faith-based initiatives have had little or no impact on houses or worship and religious social service organizations, or on the delivery of social services.
• In “Was the Bush Faith-Based Initiative a Failure?” a Jan. 26, 2010, essay on the Web site of Christianity Today, Stanley Carlson-Thies offers a counterargument to the analysis by Mark Chaves.

Background

According to Ira “Chip” Lupu, F. Elwood and Eleanor Davis Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, there have been “three critical periods in the federal government’s changing policy on this issue: between 1972 and 1996, between 1996 and 2001, and between 2001 and today.” In a January 2009 Q-and-A with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Lupu said that the trend has been toward greater church-state partnerships.

Throughout this development, the chief area of dispute has been the hiring practices of religious institutions that receive federal funds. Religious institutions set up as adjuncts of houses of worship have been able to receive funds, with the stipulation that they be used for secular purposes and not proselytizing, for example. Yet just what constitutes a “secular purpose” is a matter of dispute. And how and when such federally funded faith-based groups can choose to hire employees according to their religion remains an unsettled controversy.

In a July 2008 speech during the presidential campaign, Obama said he would expand the delivery of social services through churches and religious institutions. But his proposed plan would not allow those groups that take federal funds to discriminate in hiring.

As president, Obama appeared to amend that stand by leaving open the possibility that religious groups could use religious criteria for some hiring. Obama made that point at the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 5, 2009, when he announced the creation of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which in many respects appears similar to his predecessor’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The new office reports to the White House’s policy arm rather than the political office, as it did under Bush. The “politicization” under Bush drew fire from some critics, including a former faith-based office staffer, David Kuo. Kuo wrote a book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, that outlined the alleged problems.

The Obama version of the office has not been without its controversies. Obama appointed Joshua DuBois, a young Pentecostal pastor who led the Obama campaign’s religious outreach program, to head the office. But experts say DuBois struggled at times to clarify exactly how the Obama programs will work “on the ground.”

Resources

• ReligionLink has a number of church-state resources in the archives, as well as a helpful one-stop source guide to church-state experts and organizations.
• See a December 2005 ReligionLink edition, “Faith-based social services: the human factor,” which includes research and studies of the program’s effectiveness up to that point.
• Read a December 2008 Brookings Institution report on faith-based programs, “Serving People in Need, Safeguarding Religious Freedom: Recommendations for the New Administration on Partnerships with Faith-Based Organizations.” The report was prepared by E.J. Dionne Jr., senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings, and Melissa Rogers, director of Wake Forest University Divinity School’s Center for Religion and Public Affairs.
• Read arguments from Mark Chaves, a professor of sociology, religion and divinity at Duke University and lead researcher on the National Congregations Study, in which he cites evidence that Bush’s faith-based program “did not broadly change congregations’ behavior in terms of social service activity or their role in the social welfare system.” The comments are in a Feb. 5, 2009, Duke Divinity School news release posted on the religion blog of The Dallas Morning News.

• The Roundtable on Religion & Social Welfare Policy was funded by a Pew grant and ran from January 2002 through December 2008 under the aegis of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York. The roundtable describes itself as “the preeminent source of expert, unbiased information on policy and legal developments concerning the involvement of faith-based organizations in social services.” Its Web site still maintains an archive of research, analysis and other resources.

Polls

• A November 2009 survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows Americans broadly support faith-based programs, and Democrats more so than Republicans, for the first time. Yet a strong majority also has concerns about possible church-state violations.

• A July 2001 Gallup Poll analysis discussed several polls on the topic and showed the variance in public approval, which appeared to shift depending on whether respondents associated the initiative with Bush, and what charities they believed would benefit.

News stories

• Read a Jan. 28, 2009, blog post at Christianity Today about the appointment of Joshua DuBois and DuBois’ background and relationships with some leading religious figures and communities.
• Read a Feb. 5, 2009, analysis of the Obama program, “Obama’s New Faith Based Office – Substantive But Leaning Left,” by Beliefnet founder and author Steven Waldman.
• Read a Feb. 5, 2009, analysis of the program, “Obama Signals Higher Church-State Barrier for Faith-Based Office,” by Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report. Gilgoff includes reactions from left and right on the religious spectrum.
• Read a Feb. 6, 2009, Christianity Today interview with DuBois in which he sets out his vision of the faith-based office and how it would differ from the Bush program.
• Read a Feb. 6, 2009, news story at Christianity Today about the Obama plan. The piece quotes Doug Koopman, co-author of a book on Bush’s faith-based office, among others.
• Read a Feb. 6, 2009, Religion News Service story (posted at Crosswalk), “Legal questions remain as Obama revamps faith-based effort.”
• Read a Feb. 6, 2009, article, “Obama’s Faith-Based Office Launch Delays Key Decision on Faith-Based Hiring,” at U.S. News & World Report.
• Read a Feb. 20, 2009, Washington Post story, “Government Cutbacks Leave Faith-Based Services Hurting,” which reports that faith-based charities “are facing unprecedented cutbacks from one of their biggest funders: the government.”
• Read a Feb. 25, 2009, post at the blog of Catholic News Service about DuBois’ address that day to the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington, D.C.
• Read an essay, “Obama and the Faith-Based Initiative,” in the February edition of First Things, written by John J. DiIulio Jr., a University of Pennsylvania professor who was the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
• Read a March 2, 2009, article, “Chuck Colson and Mike Huckabee Pan Obama Faith-Based Initiatives,” posted at U.S. News & World Report.
• Read a Feb. 28, 2009, op-ed in The New York Times, “Keeping the Faith, Ignoring the History,” by Susan Jacoby. Jacoby is a well-known secularist and champion of the separation of church and state.
• Read a March 1, 2009, commentary, “No radical break,” by Mark Silk of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, Trinity College. The essay, posted at the Spiritual Politics blog, disputes Jacoby’s assertions.
• Read a March 13, 2009, essay in Commonweal magazine, “What Bush Got Right: Keeping the ‘Faith’ in Faith-Based Initiatives,” by Lew Daly, a senior fellow and director of the Fellows Program at Demos, a public-policy organization in New York City. Daly is the author of God’s Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State, published in fall 2009.

National sources

• Robert Tuttle is the David R. and Sherry Kirschner Berz Research Professor of Law and Religion at the George Washington University law School and is a widely respected author and commentator on faith-based and church-state issues. Tuttle is the co-director, with Ira “Chip” Lupu, of the Legal Tracking Project of the Roundtable on Religion & Social Welfare Policy. Contact 202-994-8163, rtuttle@law.gwu.edu.
• Nancy Ammerman is professor of the sociology of religion at Boston University’s School of Theology and chair of the sociology department. She is the author of Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and Their Partners. Contact 617-353-3066, nta@bu.edu.
• Stanley Carlson-Thies was on the staff of the White House faith-based initiatives under President George W. Bush and is a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Carlson-Thies wrote an essay (PDF format) in the Summer 2009 edition of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy defending the faith-based initiative in principle and as practiced under President Bush. He is president and founder of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance. Contact 443-8227599, stanley@irfalliance.org.
• Ram A. Cnaan is a leading expert on faith-based social services. Cnaan is a professor, the associate dean for research and chairman of the doctoral program in social welfare at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also director of the Program for Religion and Social Policy Research and co-author of The Invisible Caring Hand: American Congregations and the Provision of Welfare. Contact 215-898-5523, cnaan@sp2.upenn.edu.
• John DiIulio Jr. is a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and was the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. A frequent speaker and writer on faith-based social services, he is co-editor of What’s God Got to Do With the American Experiment? Contact 215-746-7121.
• C. Welton Gaddy is a Baptist minister and heads up the Interfaith Alliance, an organization of liberal religious leaders. He was critical of Bush’s faith-based initiative but has said he is “cautiously optimistic” about the Obama approach. Contact 202-238-3300.
• Diana Garland is dean of the Baylor University School of Social Work and an expert on best practices for faith-based practitioners. Contact 254-710-6223, Diana_Garland@baylor.edu.
• Stephen Goldsmith is Daniel Paul Professor of Government and director of the Innovations in American Government program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He was a special adviser to President George W. Bush on faith-based initiatives. A former mayor of Indianapolis, Goldsmith is the author of Putting Faith in Neighborhoods: Making Cities Work Through Grassroots Citizenship. Contact 617-384-7358, steve_goldsmith@ksg.harvard.edu.
• Joseph Loconte was the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at the Heritage Foundation. Loconte supports the right of religious organizations to discriminate in hiring even when receiving public funding. He is the author of a 2001 book about the Bush initiative, God, Government and the Good Samaritan: The Promise and the Peril of the President’s Faith-Based Agenda. Contact 202-546-4400.
• Ira “Chip” Lupu is F. Elwood and Eleanor Davis Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School and a church-state expert who writes frequently about the faith-based initiative. In a January 2009 Q-and-A with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Lupu said that the trend has been toward greater church-state partnerships. Contact 202-994-7053, iclupu@law.gwu.edu.
• The Rev. Barry Lynn is executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has criticized Obama’s faith-based program. Contact through Joe Conn, 202-466-3234, conn@au.org.
• Mark Chaves is a sociologist of religion at Duke University and a leading researcher on congregations who has written extensively on faith-based initiatives. Contact 919-660-5783, mac58@soc.duke.edu.
• Jay Sekulow is chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C., that supported Bush’s approach to the faith-based initiative. Contact 757-575-9520.

Regional sources

Northeast

• Peter Hall is a lecturer in public policy and a senior researcher at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He does research on social welfare policy and civic engagement and has held a teaching appointment in the Divinity School. Contact 203-782-1842, pd_hall@harvard.edu.
• Tracey Meares is a law professor at Yale Law School in New Haven, Conn. She has written and spoken widely on black churches and faith-based programs and urban policy. Contact 203-432-4992, tracey.meares@yale.edu.

East

• Jo Renee Formicola is a political science professor at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., and co-author, with Mary C. Segers and Paul Weber, of Faith Based Initiatives and the Bush Administration: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Contact 973-76l-9383, formicjo@shu.edu.
• Mary C. Segers is a professor of political science and department chairwoman at Rutgers University-Newark. She specializes in religion and politics and is co-author, with Jo Renee Formicola and Paul Weber, of Faith Based Initiatives and the Bush Administration: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Contact 973-353-5105, segers@andromeda.rutgers.edu.
• Steven H. Shiffrin is Charles Frank Reavis Sr. Professor of Law at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, N.Y. Shiffrin has written that liberals need to give faith-based groups more leeway to receive federal funds. Contact 607-255-4560, shs6@cornell.edu.
• Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist of religion, is director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University in New Jersey and author of Saving America?: Faith-Based Services and the Future of Civil Society. Contact 609-258-2044, wuthnow@princeton.edu.

South

• Kathleen Flake is associate professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School. An attorney, she teaches courses in religion and the law. Contact 615-322-2776, kathleen.flake@vanderbilt.edu.
• John M. Perkins is founder and president of the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation & Development in Jackson, Miss., and a founder of the Christian Community Development Association. Contact 601-354-1563.

Southeast

• Charles Marsh is a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia and director of the university’s Project on Lived Theology, which aims “to understand the way theological commitments shape the social patterns and practices of everyday life.” Contact 434-924-6839, crm3p@virginia.edu.
• Melissa Rogers teaches religion and public policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School and is director of the Center for Religion and Public Affairs there. She is a co-author, with E.J. Dionne Jr., of the December 2008 Brookings Institution report on faith-based programs, “Serving People in Need, Safeguarding Religious Freedom: Recommendations for the New Administration on Partnerships with Faith-Based Organizations.” Contact 336-758-5121, rogersm@wfu.edu.

Midwest

• Amy Black is an associate professor of politics and international relations at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., and co-author, with Doug Koopman and David Ryden, of Of Little Faith: The Politics of George W. Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives. Contact 630-752-5980, Amy.E.Black@wheaton.edu.
• Doug Koopman is a political science professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., and co-author, with Amy Black and David Ryden, of Of Little Faith: The Politics of George W. Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives. Contact 616-526-6706, dkoopman@calvin.edu.

Southwest

• Helen Rose Ebaugh is a sociology professor at the University of Houston who specializes in the sociology of religion. She has written about and researched faith-based initiatives. Contact 713-743-3952, ebaugh@uh.edu.
• Robert V. Kemper is an anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He is the co-author of a 2004 article, “The World As It Should Be: Faith-Based Community Development in America.” Contact 214-768-2928, rkemper@mail.smu.edu.

West/ Northwest

• Alan E. Brownstein teaches law at the University of California, Davis. He specializes in constitutional law and has testified before legislatures and courts in church-state issues. Contact 530-752-2586, aebrownstein@ucdavis.edu.
• Greg W. Hamilton is president of the Ridgefield, Wash.-based Northwest Religious Liberty Association, which supports the idea of faith-based initiatives. Hamilton is an ordained minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and a scholar of church-state issues, as well as an official at North Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, which serves Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. Contact 360-857-7040, greg.hamilton@nw.npuc.org.

This updates an edition from March 24, 2009.