Obama’s New Job: Rebranding the “Faith-Based Presidency”

Last updated on: May 9, 2013 at 6:07 am by Faithful Democrats

Obama’s New Job: Rebranding the “Faith-Based Presidency” 2013-05-09T06:07:05-06:00 Faithful Democrats

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As I count down the days for Obama’s inauguration into the White House (17 as of this post), I think about the need for a new model in faith-based initiative support from our elected officials and presidents.

The Bush Administration set a new standard for including faith-based initiatives and institutions in the foray of governmental support and policy making. However, what we saw during his tenure was a narrowed focus of certain wedge issues (anti-abortion measures, abstinence only education, stem cell research limitations) that were funded over more social programs by churches and faith groups, such as combating AIDS or poverty.

John DiIulio left the White House Faith-Based and Community Initiative head because the program “was not about ‘compassionate conservatism,’ as originally promised, but rather a political giveaway to the Christian right, a way to consolidate and energize that part of the base,” writes Don Suskind for the New York Times.

Suskind also believes Bush’s legacy will be infused with the idea of a “faith-based presidency.” Described as a “with-us-or-against-us model,” its ideology lies in the belief that “open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value.”

Supported generously during the Bush years were Christian organizations or programs. "We want to fund programs that save Americans one soul at a time," President Bush said, in a speech in New Orleans in January 2004.

What were not supported were non-Christian groups, especially Islamic charity groups, who were instead monitored. When visiting a mosque that also ran an anti-poverty initiative in Queens, New York two years ago, the organizer of the initiative said we shouldn’t speak very loud, because she was informed by the NYPD that they were under Homeland Security watch.

Worse yet, Bush failed to respond to the need for a variety of kinds of faith-based initiatives in his quest to satisfy the religious right. A story from Suskind’s article, and one I’ve heard Jim Wallis of Sojourners tell, speaks to Bush’s faith-based narrow-mindedness:

Moments after the ceremony, Bush saw Wallis. He bounded over and grabbed the cheeks of his face, one in each hand, and squeezed. ‘Jim, how ya doin’, how ya doin’!’ he exclaimed…Bush excitedly said that his massage therapist had given him Wallis’s book, ‘Faith Works.’ Wallis recalls telling Bush he was doing fine, ‘“but in the State of the Union address a few days before, you said that unless we devote all our energies, our focus, our resources on this war on terrorism, we’re going to lose.” I said, “Mr. President, if we don’t devote our energy, our focus and our time on also overcoming global poverty and desperation, we will lose not only the war on poverty, but we’ll lose the war on terrorism.”’

Bush replied that that was why America needed the leadership of Wallis and other members of the clergy.

‘No, Mr. President,’ Wallis says he told Bush, ‘we need your leadership on this question, and all of us will then commit to support you. Unless we drain the swamp of injustice in which the mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we’ll never defeat the threat of terrorism.’

Bush looked quizzically at the minister, Wallis recalls. They never spoke again after that.

From what we are already seeing in the Obama transition team, we know he will do better. He is already rebranding Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to be more grassroots oriented by renaming it White House Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In the opinion of U.S. News blogger Dan Gilgoff, this is more than a PR campaign.

He notes that many lefty faith-based organizations (mostly social justice oriented, like Faith in Public Life, Matthew 25 Network, and Catholics United) popped up after the 2004 traumatic reelection of Bush. As Gilgoff says, “These aren’t mere letterhead organizations.” In the past four years or less, they have launched considerable defenses against the religious right and made partnerships with “official organs of the Democratic Party.”

The difference to Gilgoff on Obama’s work with such groups is his transition team’s outreach to these groups with proposals to turn their work into actual policy. Which means Obama is really listening to a diverse set of faith voices. Hallelujah, Amen.

Hopefully our new President keeps an ear on the faithful, not to appease a certain voting bloc but to solve our nation’s social problems and to make the world a better place.

Maybe Obama will finally put to practice what everybody preaches.

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