Weekly Opinion Roundup - 7/22/2008
As the debate continues over the issue of faith-based social service, the Roundtable will assemble a weekly digest of opinion from all sides for your consideration.
Faith-Based Obama; His proposal for government-funded initiatives is carefully tailored.
The Washington Post
Editorial
07/21/2008
Barack Obama gave a speech promoting faith-based initiatives recently that managed to upset both sides of the debate over whether and how to blend government funding and religious institutions. The strict separation of church and state types expressed dismay that Mr. Obama promised a continuation of what they see as undue entanglement. Some religious groups were unhappy about Mr. Obama's caveat: "[I]f you get a federal grant you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them -- or against the people you hire -- on the basis of their religion."
The controversial part is between the dashes: whether faith-based groups can discriminate in hiring. Religious institutions are generally exempt from the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on religion -- this only makes sense. The hiring issue comes up in two ways related to government-funded programs, however. First, can the faith-based group choose to hire only adherents for that program? For instance, could a church that operates a soup kitchen, even if it does not preach to those it feeds, still employ only those who share its beliefs? Second, can faith-based groups discriminate in other ways to avoid conflicting with religious beliefs? Specifically, can religious groups that frown on homosexuality refuse to hire openly gay employees in government-funded programs? This question could take on new importance if a measure prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation were to become law during an Obama administration.
Currently, the answers to those questions are mixed, but the trend is toward giving religious groups more flexibility. The welfare reform law signed by President Bill Clinton explicitly permits religious groups to discriminate in hiring under the programs it funds. Other statutes explicitly prohibit such discrimination. The Bush administration has done what it can through executive orders and regulations to relax the rules for faith-based groups. The argument is that faith-based groups ought to be given the leeway granted to federally funded groups such as Planned Parenthood, which is entitled to hire staff that share its views on reproductive rights.
As a practical matter, this is not the huge obstacle that proponents of laxer rules conjure up. Most would-be employees who don't share the outlook of faith-based groups won't want to work for them anyway. Most faith-based groups that take federal funds have managed to thrive for years without discriminating in their hiring. Groups that believe hiring only members of their own faith is essential to their social service mission would remain free to do so as long as they do not take federal funds. Mr. Obama is right to want to tap into the power of faith-based groups to deliver social services. He is also right to want to prevent government funds from being used to subsidize discriminatory practices. His position strikes a sensible balance in a delicate area.
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Separation of Church and State
Sentinel & Enterprise (Fitchburg, Massachusetts)
Sentinel & Enterprise (Fitchburg, Massachusetts)
07/21/2008
My mother had a deft way of turning away those well-meaning folks -- Jehovah's Witnesses? Mormons? -- that came to our front door to convert our family to their faith.
"We have our own religion, thank you!" she would say, while closing the door quickly to avoid further interrogation.
Actually, our religion was susceptible to further interrogation. With me in tow, my mother was a churchgoing Irish Catholic. At that time, my father was a nonobservant Anglican who drove us to church and then waited outside and read the Sunday paper. He took as his text the sports pages, an understandable heresy.
In short, our family religion was a bit confused -- but it still was not in the market for whatever itinerant religious doorknockers had for sale. They should have been minding their own spiritual business. We were minding ours.
"We have our own religion, thank you." I have come to think of that phrase as the polite and sensible prescription for social interaction in general. To my mind, religion has a place in the public square, but I don't think anyone should have to declare his or her religion to stand proud in that public square. If we are saved, I believe we are saved individually -- we don't get the group rate.
Because I view religion in such personal terms, I do not want politicians being religious on my behalf or promoting religion with my taxes. I do not want to vote for someone who promises to reflect my "values." I believe in honesty, courtesy and plentiful cold beer, which, if they became universal in all quarters, would only cause mischief to our way of life.
Which brings me, in a circuitous way that only the Almighty knows, to Barack Obama.
Not to be rude, but what the heck is he up to? While I don't mind him positioning himself as a centrist -- that is what presidential candidates do and that is why politics is such an untrustworthy business -- did he really have to promise last week to outdo George W. Bush's program of faith-based initiatives?
What next? Will he promise federal funding to facilitate the rapture? Turn the Erie Canal into a national baptismal font?
Not content that President Bush found a clever way to drill holes in the wall of separation between church and state at taxpayer expense, the Democratic hopeful now wants to improve on that job, although with assurances that his program will be restricted to charity work with a secular purpose and won't tolerate any religious-based discrimination.
That's nice, but the devil here is not in the details. Given that the wall of separation between church and state has been turned into a large Swiss cheese in the Bush years, some us believe that the solution isn't to provide a more attractive cheese platter.
That old wall needs some serious repair. Ironically, that wall is the best friend religion in America has ever had. We only have to look at the example of Britain to see what the dead hand of government sponsorship has done to church attendance. Churches in England are often where old people go to feel more lonely.
After more than 230 years, some Americans still struggle to understand what the Founding Fathers knew well enough from the example of the Old World: Religion is the beer of the soul, an intoxicant with the capacity to send us to heaven or hell. It lends sanity to some while it drives others mad.
As for me, I am for moderation in all things. If the government entanglement with religion continues, I fear the old suppressed seeds of religious bigotry flowering as weeds.
I do not want Episcopalians punching people who dare to use the wrong dinner fork, Presbyterians feeling predestined to punch back, Baptists throwing cold water in all directions, Catholics getting feisty for fear of being left out, and Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Rastafarians and Druids also joining the fray in the interest of inclusiveness. I do not want the Unitarians, who take a broader view, giving everyone a good sulking.
We see a precursor of such mischief every time a school board, in a fit of religiously inspired creative deception, attempts to introduce creationism into a curriculum under the guise of creative design. Fistfights would be breaking out more often if lawsuits were not more fun.
The wall of separation between church and state was built by the wise to protect everyone, the ones in church and the ones reading the paper in the parking lot. Barack Obama should shore that wall up, not seek to curry favor of those who would knock it down. He hasn't got a prayer of getting their vote anyway.
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Reality Sets In About Obama; Liberals Lament Flim-Flam Candidate
The Washington Times
Nat Hentoff
07/21/2008
I was among the millions of Americans to whom such faded words as "change" and "hope" in political campaigns began to brighten as Barack Obama was energizing both new votes while tempering the hardened skepticism of those of us who had been gulled by glowing politicians who wound up like the enticing con man played by Robert Preston in the classic movie, "The Music Man." Now, more of Mr. Obama's followers are feeling newly gulled by him.
Mr. Obama's deflation has not been due to ruthless opposition research by John McCain's team but by the "change" candidate himself. Like millions of Americans, I, for a time, was buoyed - by the real-time prospect of our first black president and much more by the likelihood that Mr. Obama would pierce the dense hypocrisy and insatiable power-grabbing of current American politics. Also, as a former teacher of constitutional law, Mr. Obama gave me "hope I could believe in" that he would rescue the Constitution's separation of powers, resuscitate the Bill of Rights and begin to restore our reputation around the world as a truly law-abiding nation.
Savoring the high expectations he had secured among so many Americans, Mr. Obama has decided he can also come closer to securing the Oval Office by softening his starlight enough to change some of his principles toward the calming center of our stormy political waters. In a defense by Dan Gerstein, a New York political consultant - echoing what you'll be hearing more of from Mr. Obama's campaign operatives - the gossamer script goes: "He is trying to broaden his appeal to a larger electorate and to be true to this postpartisan, unifying message that he's been campaigning on."
But instead of the ennobling clarion trombones of change we have been promised, this "adjusting" of one's principles has long been the common juggling of our common politicians. Accordingly, as his presidential campaign gathered such momentum, Mr. Obama, with justifiable pride, pointed to the resounding fact that most of the bountiful funds he was raising came from small donors, "the people," not the sort of supporters who move above us in private jet planes.
But after abandoning his pledge to abide by public financing, this apostle of cleansing the political culture is now going after the high rollers. As the July 3 New York Times reported, "Last week, the Obama campaign collected about $5 million at an event featuring celebrities in
Los Angeles. The evening began with a dinner at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for more than 200 people who had contributed $28,500 per couple, or raised $50,000."
Then there is the current furor among a rising number of Obama contributors with wallets far below the $50,000-a-pop crowd about his change on the "compromise" FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that passed the House and Senate, and has been signed by the grateful president. The flimflam candidate had assured his faithful enthusiasts that he would filibuster this bill (which will immunize the telecommunications companies that enabled the president to break the law in his once-secret warrantless wiretapping) that turned our privacy rights upside down and out.
Now, by dismissing the scores of lawsuits against these companies from Americans wanting to know whether they've been ensnared in this giant government-spun Web, the president and such supporters as Obama will have made it close to impossible to conduct meaningful investigations of the intricate nexus of the ways these telecommunications giants can collect leads to Americans with no connections to terrorism - and could continue to so as long as they're assured by a future lawless administration that national security demands breaking another law.
But what could be wrong with a new Obama approach - to assert his religious faith by, if elected, expanding the government funding of faith-based social services through churches and other religious institutions? The former constitutional law professor does avoid one separation-of-church-and-state problem by pledging that the recipients of these taxpayer funds could not engage in hiring discrimination on the basis of an employee's religion, thereby not limiting those hired to that particular faith.
However, I expect Professor Obama knows of the importance in constitutional case law of the need to avoid excessive entanglements of the state with religious institutions. To prevent churches and other religious groups that get government funds from discrimination in their employment practices and proselytizing with taxpayers' money will require careful and extensive monitoring by the state.
Says the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister and president of the Interfaith Alliance, in the July 4 Jewish Week: "You can say none of this money should be used for proselytizing or that there shouldn't be discrimination, but what does that mean for the little storefront agency, where there can be a subtle or even more blatant form of discrimination, and where proselytizing does occur?" And not just storefront recipients.
But Mr. Obama insists this program will be the "moral center" of his administration. Just where is his own center of credibility?
I remember the surge of hope for a national change as a child, during the Great Depression, when, while my mother would walk blocks to save a few cents on food, there came Franklin Delano Roosevelt! I haven't seen such a surge since Mr. Obama's first chorus, but I can no longer believe in this messenger of such tidings.
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Encouraging the Armies of Compassion
The Christian Post
Mark Earley
07/21/2008
At the beginning of his administration, President Bush established the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The idea was as simple as it was controversial: The federal government would work with faith-based groups to tackle tough social problems.
At the beginning of his administration, President Bush established the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The idea was as simple as it was controversial: The federal government would work with faith-based groups to tackle tough social problems.
Last June, at a conference attended by 1,500 leaders of faith-based and community groups, the president recognized the progress that has been made between the government and these groups over the past eight years; for example, partnering with organizations that help ex-prisoners make a successful transition back to society.
The idea is even spreading to the states—Alabama, where the government, for example, will coordinate, but not fund, efforts by the faith community to help ex-prisoners find employment, housing, health care, and spiritual guidance.
The Church has brought enormous resources—and most importantly, love—to the table for years in meeting social needs. For example, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and especially recently during the horrific flooding in the Midwest, it was churches and community organizations that reached victims quickly and effectively with aid and compassion.
Indeed, in a speech last month, President Bush said that he considers faith-based groups the “foot soldiers” in the “armies of compassion.”
“Every day you mend broken hearts with love,” he said. “You mend broken lives with hope. And you mend broken communities with countless acts of extraordinary kindness.”
And then he said something I would never expect a president to say (but I am glad he did): “Bureaucracies can put money in people’s hands, but they cannot put hope in a person’s heart.”
Groups like Prison Fellowship are on the front lines bringing the hope of Jesus Christ to the hopeless and marginalized. And though we do not take any government money, I applaud President Bush for recognizing the fact that there is a place for partnerships between government and faith-based groups.
There are hopeful signs that this good work will continue.
In speaking about helping ex-prisoners reenter society, Republican presidential candidate John McCain recently said, “Beyond government, there are churches and community groups all across our country that stand ready to help . . . And these groups will have the committed support of my administration.”
And just last week, Barack Obama proposed to expand the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, providing $500 million for faith-based groups to assist the poor. One caveat—Obama’s proposal may come with a string attached: The Senator said he would ensure that faith groups accepting federal funds will not be able to restrict who they hire. If that is true, that would be a deal breaker: Religious liberty is an empty phrase if the government can dictate who faith-based groups can hire.
Compassion has been, and always should be, the role of the faith community. Let’s pray that our future president—whoever he may be—will continue to recognize and support the role faith groups play in changing lives and encourage their acts of love.
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Obama Should Avoid Pitfalls of Mixing Church and State
Tennessean.com
Editorial
07/20/2008
Sen. Barack Obama's overture for maintaining a faith-based initiative in the federal government in his bid for the presidency invites problems that could easily be avoided.
Embracing one of the cornerstones of the early candidacy of President Bush, Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, announced in
Ohio this month that he would like to see more federal money go to faith-based organizations. He said he would establish a Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and he proposed $500 million a year for summer teaching initiatives. He said he would expand the program under President Bush that steers federal funds to religious charities.
Obama's obviously well-intended proposal, like Bush's, is meant to do good works and help people. But once federal funds are devoted to organizations that have religious affiliations, the program immediately raises red flags about separation of church and state. The federal government cannot be about promoting any particular religion. Once you start selecting groups deemed worthy of federal funds, you are choosing in ways that could quickly be cited as favoring one religion over another, whether or not that was actually the case. The practice raises many questions, not the least of which is how to handle the hiring and firing of personnel in those agencies. If they take federal money, do they have to forsake their religious principles in handling of employees?
Obama says his plan would allow religious organizations to hire and fire on religious grounds only in portions of the organizations' work that is not federally funded. But making that statement in policy and actually pulling it off can be very different things. It can be a bureaucratic bear to make that work. President Bush has maintained a faith-based program, but its reviews have been mixed. Some have criticized it as being more about political philosophy than its stated purpose. Obama says the funds could not be used to proselytize, but that opens the question of whether the groups would be limited from pursuing their own stated missions. Would they want strings attached?
It is puzzling that Obama would so overtly advocate funding religious groups when religious overtones have troubled his campaign already. The controversy over the statements of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, from whom Obama finally had to distance himself, was not a bright spot in the Obama campaign. Why he would make a very public attempt to promote faith-based initiatives with a pledge of federal funds in that aftermath is a mystery.
Obama says the plan is inspired by his own sense of needing to do "the Lord's work" and because government cannot solve problems alone. But it is curious that Obama never made much of the issue during the heat of the primary season in the race for the Democratic nomination. It is also curious that he would raise it only now when more centrist views are in vogue as he tangles with a Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, the likely GOP nominee. It did not escape attention that Obama articulated his plan during a visit to
Ohio, which is considered a battleground state in the general election.
There is, of course, little doubt that the types of programs that would be helped by such funds would be worthy organizations that do good work. But this is not using the bully pulpit of the presidency to encourage religious groups to do good deeds. It's a plan to send taxpayers' funds to organizations affiliated with specific religions. It is not simply a controversial move like funneling public funds to the arts, which is open to philosophical debate. It's an attempt that threatens to cross a constitutional line between church and state. The federal government may not establish a religion, and it ought not act in ways that suggest that it is willing to push those bounds.
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Obama Faith-Based Efforts Eye Evangelicals
The Washington Times
Adrienne T. Washington
07/20/2008
Lost in the sideshow over the Rev. Jesse Jackson's ungodly digs about Sen. Barack Obama's anatomy is the more substantive issue of government-funded faith-based initiatives.
Unproductive arguments about Mr. Jackson's envy or irrelevance could persist for days while a growing number of indigent and incapacitated Americans seek relief from an increasingly cash-strapped, overburdened social services network that includes countless houses of worship.
Donald W. Mathis, president and CEO of Community Action Partnership, which represents 1,000 social-services providers nationwide, recalls his early days as a social worker helping to operate a Head Start preschool program out of a Catholic church basement.
The faith-based initiative has the potential for a significant effect on the presidential election, particularly among younger faith voters, he suggests. They are more interested in poverty, AIDS and addiction than certain conservative wedge issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
However, Mr. Mathis said the focus on the faith-based initiative, in terms of its political implications and the church-versus-state contentions, misses the point about those folks in need.
"There are a lot of people hurting ... and we can't waste one person," says Mr. Mathis. If churches can present track records proving their ability to provide social services, "then so be it," he says.
Not so fast, contend critics like the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Churches should realize that they need "to use voluntary sources of money, not government funds to go out and do missions in their community that they think are important," Mr. Lynn said in a televised interview.
In voicing their concerns about religious groups using government funds to promote their beliefs and activities, some point to the issue of fairness in what Mr. Mathis describes as the "cutthroat business" of securing grants.
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Judge Faith-Based Services on Outcomes
The Tampa Tribune
The Tampa Tribune
07/20/2008
Civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson doesn't just disagree with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama about his call for greater personal responsibility in the black community.
Jackson also disagrees with Obama on allowing faith-based organizations to receive federal money for social programs. Obama recently said he would expand the president's efforts, a stance liberals say has shifted him too far to the political center.
But just as President Bush was right to help religious groups help the needy, Obama is wise to want to continue the effort. Faith-based programs do not violate the Constitution's sanctions against the intrusion of religion in government affairs. Bush's directive simply required that federal agencies not discriminate against religious organizations when awarding money for programs that help those in need.
Sometimes, his directive was taken too far, such as when
Tampa's domestic-abuse shelter, The Spring, was asked to resubmit a federal grant proposal to include a faith-based component.
More important than a religious component is a program's effectiveness, no matter who runs it.
"Those who advocate on behalf of huge government antipoverty programs often focus on increasing the levels of spending instead of achieving results," Florida's Jim Towey, who once headed Bush's White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, wrote in the Washington Post last month.
"Take Head Start, the government's multibillion-dollar early-childhood initiative. President Bush tried to build accountability and to tie funding to outcomes rather than follow the well-traveled path of perpetual funding. He lost, and so did many qualified faith-based programs that remain spectators because of the stranglehold that current grantees have on funding."
Towey is right. There must be greater accountability. An organization's religious leanings should be secondary to a program's effectiveness. That is where the debate on faith-based initiatives needs to focus.
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Faith-based funds can provide real hope
Tennessean.com
Linda Leathers
07/19/2008
What a privilege to be in Washington, D.C., in June to hear President Bush highlight The Next Door as a national model of recovery support services.
Who could have imagined an organization birthed from "wild prayin' women" at a local congregation in 2002 would receive such recognition or be considered a national example for faith-based organizations building effective partnerships within the private and public sector?
There is a misconception that there is a pot of government funding designated for "faith-based groups." Faith-based organizations are now allowed to compete for federal funding on a level playing ground and cannot be discriminated against on the basis of faith-based core values. The tireless efforts of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives have opened up the process so diverse organizations — secular, faith-based, community-based — are eligible for funding to address the many needs across our country.
This is not about politics or party affiliations. At the same conference where the president recognized the work of The Next Door, Sen. Joe Lieberman affirmed the significant work of faith-based organizations that have been allowed to compete for funding without having to discard their spiritual roots. Sen. Barack Obama has indicated support for faith-based organizations to continue to be eligible for government funding.
Consider The Next Door
I'd like to share some of our story to increase understanding of the importance of partnerships between faith-based programs and government at all levels.
The Next Door combines a passion to share God's grace with "best practices" in an array of recovery support services. Our mission is to help women coming out of crisis — incarceration, addiction treatment centers and homelessness — equipping them for lives of wholeness and hope. Our core values are Christ-centered. We do not discriminate based on a faith background; no one is forced to believe in a certain belief structure. Our doors are open to any woman who wants a fresh start, and every woman who enters is treated with great respect.
The Next Door provides housing, clinical services, work-force development, life skills and mentoring relationships to women with great needs: 99 percent have an addiction to an illegal substance;
85 percent have been abused; 70 percent have a mental health disorder. The women we serve desperately need to be reminded that God has a plan and purpose for their life that is GOOD! They need to believe again that life can be different. The Next Door offers HOPE!
The recidivism rate for women nationally is estimated to be over 65 percent. From May 2004 to the present, The Next Door has served more than 450 women. For women completing the six-month program, the recidivism rate is only 10 percent; for women staying at least 90 days, it is just 21 percent. There is HOPE!
We are grateful that God is doing a great work at The Next Door. We are grateful for resources, both private and public, that support this ministry. There is nothing better than seeing transformation in the lives of the women we serve. These are HOPEFUL days.
Linda Leathers is CEO of The Next Door. To learn more, visit www.thenextdoor.org.
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Beyond the Obama Plan For Faith-Based Initiatives
American Chronicle
Yossef Ben-Meir
07/18/2008
Yossef Ben-Meir teaches sociology at the
University of New Mexico in
Albuquerque. He is also President of the High Atlas Foundation (www.highatlasfoundation.org) – a nonprofit organization that promotes rural community development in Morocco.
Recently, Senator Barack Obama announced his plan for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives if he became president. Although his proposals are in the right direction, other formative measures can be taken to strengthen community and individual empowerment through more assured nonsectarian processes.
In the faith-based program initiated by President Bush, federal funds given to religious organizations for social services were not to be used to proselytize. Rather, the funds were to be distributed by these organizations to people in need, regardless of their religion, and to be used for secular social and economic activities. Senator Obama stated that he would uphold these important guidelines while extending the scope of the nondiscrimination clause to include people hired by faith organizations to administer community initiatives. Though a positive step, the extension is likely to only moderately allay concerns about government-religion entanglement and the use of the program to promote partisan interests, especially in the context of recent allegations from some of the program's former officials.
In its current form, the program supplies some guidance to religious organizations, large and small, about ways to access federal funding. To this end, point people, assigned in the eight participating federal departments and two agencies, assist religious groups in the application process on how to provide financial support for their faith-based initiatives. Senator Obama suggests extending this support through training of religious groups on how the federal funding system works and how to obtain the finances they need to run their social services. This training would give many organizations an opportunity to make a real difference in their communities that they may not have had otherwise.
Senator Obama's plan to target and expand initiatives that address key areas the program currently contributes to, most prominently afterschool and summer programs in education that would serve 1 million students, is also bold. Indeed, altogether, his proposals are helpful. However, additional reforms would enable religious organizations with federal support to more effectively provide social services while more rigorously maintaining the separation between church and state.
The following are three suggestions:
1. Connect interfaith partnership to receiving funding: In announcing his plan, Senator Obama referred to the importance of interfaith coalitions. He said that they are needed to impact enormous challenges, such as children living in poverty. From a developmental perspective, the importance of partnership here cannot be overemphasized.
In a developmental partnership, each partner brings essential inputs - technical, financial, administrative, labor, and/or other resources - to help achieve the goals of the project. In recent years, the idea of partnership has become an inseparable part of the concept of sustainable development: the more groups and individuals that come together to support an initiative, the more people there are that work to see it endure and therefore the better chance that it will. For example, partnerships mean more eyes on the finances and project materials, which help to prevent corruption and mismanagement.
In the context of faith-based initiatives, opportunities to proselytize a particular religious doctrine or serve a partisan interest become more infrequent when diverse interfaith coalitions participate. Strongly linking interfaith partnerships with funded initiatives will give real meaning to the new name Senator Obama proposes for the faith-based program - Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
2. Require 501c3 nonprofit incorporation: One way to ensure that federal funds for social services do not mingle with these institutions' general funds, which can be used for inherently religious purposes, is for faith-based institutions to create a separate nonprofit organization in the Internal Revenue Services' 501c3 category. This simple procedure will bring more transparency and organizational structure to the overall management of the community initiatives. The web site of the White House faith-based program currently mentions that some religious organizations have already created a separate 501c3 organization to manage their federally funded social services, but the site stops short of encouraging this practice.
3. Promote "participatory" initiatives: Experts in community development and the overwhelming majority of the literature on the subject underscore at least one of its guiding premises: when communities themselves determine, implement, and manage the social initiatives intended to benefit them, the initiatives are significantly more likely to succeed and the attributes of empowerment, including informed decision-making, are better instilled. This observation, based on experience, is captured in Senator Obama's frequent statements, including his recent speech about the faith-based program, that show him as strongly favoring "bottom-up" versus "top-down" approaches to social change.
Participation of community members, from design to evaluation and for the life of the initiative, ought to be a major criterion for federal funding. Support for this goal can be a way for Senator Obama to shows he stands by his own words when he says that taxpayer dollars for faith-based initiatives "will only go to those programs that actually work." And such participation will make it more difficult to advance partisan interests because the communities themselves will be ultimately in control of the faith-based initiatives. In addition to training religious organizations in navigating the federal funding system that Senator Obama proposes, skills can be transferred for these organizations to promote community management of development initiatives.
Yossef Ben-Meir is a former Peace Corps volunteer and president of the High Atlas Foundation (www.highatlasfoundation.org), a nonprofit organization that promotes community development in Morocco.
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A Matter of Faith
The Forward
The Forward
07/18/2008
Barack Obama probably did his cause more harm than he realized earlier this month when he vowed, in a pair of well-orchestrated speeches, to make religion specifically a partnership between government and churches into a moral centerpiece of his administration.
Obama detailed his plan to audiences in
Zanesville, Ohio, and
St. Louis, just before and after Independence Day. Simply put, he offered a souped-up version of President Bush's faith-based initiative, which bestows federal tax dollars on churches to deliver localized, hands-on social services.
Bush's faith-based project was a bad idea that became a scandal, a frontal assault on church-state separation turned political slush fund, corrupting church and state alike. Obama's idea of change seems to entail enlarging the project, installing some putative safeguards and elevating it to centerpiece status. Going further, he promises to have the program's top preachers, those who join his planned Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership, take on a broader role by helping to set our national agenda.
Something is wrong here. Separation of church and state has been a cornerstone of Democratic thinking more or less continuously since the days of Thomas Jefferson, founder of the party and architect of the proverbial wall of separation. Bush's faith-based initiative, building on a modest
Clinton experiment in triangulation, opened a worrying breach in the wall. The next president should be planning to repair it. Instead, the Democratic contender proposes turning the wall into a tollbooth. Instead of better separating church and state, he wants to make them partners.
Obama claims that America's problems are too big for government to solve. Change, he said in
Zanesville, must come from the bottom up, not from the top down. As a model, he recalled the historic role of religious leaders in the struggles against slavery, for women's rights and civil rights. He dismissed his plan's critics as people who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square.
In fact, hardly anybody argues seriously that religion has no proper role in public life. It's obvious that those who enter the public arena bring along a set of values. Trouble comes when religious institutions enter the arena and try to exert their influence. That's the trouble that the Founders sought to prevent when they drew a firm line between church and state: the ancient strife that erupts when churches enter the political world and compete for power.
Obama's most fundamental error, though, is his notion that America's problems are too big for government to solve. It is precisely when problems are society wide that society must act together to solve them. That means government, which is, or should be, nothing more than the collective will of society.
It wasn't preachers' sermons or parishioners' marches that ended slavery. Yes, brave activists helped to sway public opinion and press government to act. But when the slaves went free, it was Union soldiers who freed them. The United States Senate gave women the vote, while state legislatures around the country ensured their property, employment and divorce rights. Federal troops cleared the path for black students entering a
Little Rock, Ark., high school that the U. S. Supreme Court had ordered integrated. Congress outlawed racial and religious discrimination. And if Americans ever get serious about fighting poverty, hunger and disease, it will take new laws to get the job done.
Only laws can raise and allocate the tax dollars for adequate welfare and unemployment protection. New laws are needed to restructure our health insurance system and ensure that every American receives decent health care. Laws are needed to protect the rights of workers to form unions and bargain fairly with their bosses. Only laws can force a reversal of carbon burning and save the planet from suffocation. We can't wait until individual citizens decide to act decently. Politics means winning and using power to make things happen.
Barack Obama may have the best intentions, but that won't bring change. If he means to be president, he'd better understand the power of the job he's seeking and the workings of the government he plans to run.
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Obama Is Right about Something
The New York Sun
Alicia Colon
07/18/2008
Because of the brouhaha over the Rev. Jesse Jackson's injudicious threat to Senator Obama, not much attention has been paid to the issue that was being discussed by Mr. Obama; the expansion of President Bush's faith-based initiatives. That is a pity, because these initiatives work and I hope Mayor Bloomberg will not dismiss them in his efforts against homelessness.
A Sun reader who is a parishioner of
Sacred Heart
Church in Glendale, Queens, wrote me when she discovered that the church's homeless shelter had been closed. Sacred Heart had one of the longest running church-related shelters in the city. She wrote: "All the workers are volunteers i.e. cooks, overnight security etc. The guests want to come to our shelter because it is safe, clean, and pleasant. In fact, many of the guests actually request this shelter."
I spoke to the pastor of Sacred Heart, Father John Fullum, who clarified the story. It is true that the shelter, for the moment, is closed, but he said it only operated in the winter, because the shelter is located in the church basement which gets insufferably hot in the summer. The church received "guests" who were referred to it through a screening process performed by the Partnership for the Homeless, whose funding has now been cut. The actual work at the shelter was done by over 200 church volunteers.
He referred me to John Ciraolo, who explained how the shelter operated. The Partnership for the Homeless has drop-in centers for those individuals needing shelter and a meal. Guests would be screened and their needs analyzed before they would be referred to the Sacred Heart shelter. Typically these were people with low-paying jobs, not the ones sleeping in boxes on the street or those with substance abuse problems. He spoke of an example of two recent guests who are college students left homeless when two of their other roommates left for one reason or another. Unable to afford the high rents in the city, they were left homeless.
Mr. Ciraolo said that he understood why the mayor is trying to realign the homeless agency, but he said, "We're not dealing with commodities or something that can be solved with a business plan. We're dealing with people, individuals who have different needs, personalities. Many of our guests have jobs, and are high-functioning. They're just down on their luck temporarily."
I then spoke to Zoila Torres at the Partnership for the Homeless. When I expressed dismay at the lack of affordable housing in the city that I consider the root cause of the homelessness, Mr. Torres concurred.
Mitchell-Lama is a program that provides tax incentives to developers if they provide some housing for low-income families. It made it possible for my husband and me to live in
Waterside Plaza in 1975 in the East River complex. The program was selective and we qualified because my husband was in the entertainment industry and we "fit in" with the other high-end renters in the surrounding buildings.
Many of the homeless guesting in these church shelters will not qualify for Mitchell-Lama housing. Warehousing the homeless in city-run facilities may get the homeless out of sight, but it's the faith-based shelters that provide them with dignity, inspiration, and hope.
This weekend at the Algonquin Theatre,
123 East 24th St., there are two performances of a choreo-poem called "Every Soul has a Song" by J. Fitzgerald. The playwright is a former homeless man. He's now clean and sober thanks to help he received through the faith-based initiatives.
These programs work. Why cut them?
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Change Believers can Believe In? Obama's Leap of Faith
The Huffington Post
Matthew Weiner and Travis Rejman
07/17/2008
Senator Obama's announcement to expand President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative returns attention to a heated public debate about the role of religion in government. Negative reactions from the left and the right demonstrate that a liberal candidate engaging religion will not ease the polarized positions between secular liberals and the religious right. With this ever heightened animosity, can Senator Obama's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships be what he calls the "moral center" of his administration?
Critics are right to point out problems that the current administration's Faith-Based initiative has yet to resolve. To date the office has overwhelmingly funded conservative Protestant and Evangelical Christians. Minority religious communities have been neglected. How the initiative stands up to our constitutional separation of church and state remains mired in the courts. And the question of where to draw the line between faith as a component of good citizenship and self-help, as opposed to proselytizing, is tricky business.
Senator Obama's background as a community-organizer could very well enable him to leverage the interest and commitment of people from religious communities to define and engage his call for "moral center." To do this, his plan will need to encourage partnerships between a wide range of local religious groups and their secular counterparts. Despite the vociferous cries from the far reaches of the left and right, there appears to be a growing recognition that these interfaith partnerships are both possible and effective. In fact, our recent surveys of religious leaders from politically, religiously, and culturally diverse backgrounds found that 70% of leaders believe working across religious lines improves their effectiveness as leaders. Nearly 100% believed that such partnerships improve relations across communities.
Obama's re-imagination of the faith-based initiative is a healthy step in the right direction. By including neighborhood partnerships as a strategical focus, Obama is using his community organizing knowledge to highlight an important sociological fact: faith-based organizing happens in particular localities, where partnerships create powerful social networks that help the common good.
But two major sticking points remain. First, how will the program keep religious groups from proselytizing, or only serving their own? Second, how can a government program that gives funds to religion do so under the rubric of a church-state separation?
One strategy is to require religious groups that receive government funds to work with religious communities from faiths different than their own. Instead of funding a church to feed the homeless, fund the church and the mosque across the street to feed the homeless together. Instead of funding a synagogue's domestic violence program, fund a Jewish-Hindu-Muslim program that battles domestic violence. Instead of a blank check to a religious group, encourage them to share funding, and programs, with similar Jewish and Muslim projects. This way, every constituency will feel safe and be cared for.
This is called interfaith partnership. It is the awareness and practical acceptance of religious diversity, and the mutual commitment by those involved to learn about one another, respect differences, and work together for the common good. Faith communities are increasingly articulate about their unique aspirations and commitments to serve those in need across religious lines. They are likewise required to do so by law if funded by the government. Therefore they can certainly work with religious others to serve all people and fulfill their religious and legal obligations.
Encouraging or requiring these kinds of interfaith partnerships will have serious positive effects. First, diverse religious communities will learn about each other while simultaneously helping those in need. Economic and social partnerships foster tolerance and allow for communities to remain religiously distinct. Imagine: through partnerships for the common good religious groups will learn that there is indeed a common good to work towards.
Second, the program will stimulate civic participation and build social capital, both key components in fostering American democracy. Social scientists recognize this process, but also argue that groups can grow dangerously insular and polarized. The interfaith requirement will encourage religious organizations to reach out to one another, bridging social, political, and cultural divides.
Third, the danger of proselytizing and social service exclusion by government funded groups will be reduced. This is indeed where the question of church/state separation is the most serious. With the likes of Billy Graham calling Islam an evil religion, and then seeking to "help" Muslims, the danger is real. But by symbiotically partnering every Christian group with a Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist group they will keep each other in check . Interfaith helps safeguard the constitution.
Fourth, while the Faith-Based initiative will remain controversial, the interfaith component will remind both parties of imperatives we all agree upon. By insisting that every religious community receive equal share in the program, something that is now not even symbolically attempted, there is protection against the tyranny of any one "church" influencing the state: the reason for our constitution's clause. This goes to the heart of earlier court rulings against Bush's initiative.
But will it work? Will conservative Christians, not to mention Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and Buddhists work together? Again, or experience working in
Chicago and New York, is that religiously different groups can work well together, in spite of political and theological differences. This is counter intuitive to both liberal and conservative commentators who would like to think we have a "culture war" on our hands. Instead, on the ground, interfaith works well.
This interfaith strategy is hinted at in Obama's plan: thinking about faith-based projects in terms of neighborhoods and partnerships leads one to conclude that it should be an interfaith venture. We live in the most religiously diverse nation in the world. As a nation, we have always argued, both constitutionally and historically. that diversity is the source and dynamism of our democratic tradition. An interfaith approach to the Faith Based Initiative will significantly enhance our collective resources to reach disenfranchised and immigrant communities and will simultaneously foster tolerance and civic participation. What better way to bolster our tradition of civic engagement as the engagement of citizens across lines of difference?
Many on the left fear Obama's plan as a political stunt to woo evangelical voters. But something greater is possible: a new framework that engages the populace across the political spectrum. This could teach us all a great deal about working together. If the Faith-Based initiative is legitimately for all, then all faiths can legitimately work together. The step of an uncomfortable partnership with those religiously and politically different from oneself takes a courageous leap of faith. It would be a patriotic one, as well.
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Media Apply God-Talk Double Standard
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
Editorial, Colleen Carroll Campbell
07/17/2008
For the past eight years, Americans have heard an awful lot about theocracy. The rumblings began in 2000, when candidate George W. Bush unveiled his plan for a faith-based initiative that would expand federal funding to religious organizations that perform social services for the needy.
Although Bush stipulated that faith-based organizations could not use federal funds to proselytize or discriminate against recipients of their services, critics on the left blasted his plan as a stealth step toward government-subsidized churches.
The theocrat charge surfaced again when Bush answered a debate query about his favorite philosopher by citing "Jesus Christ, because he changed my heart." Critics howled that Bush was pandering to religious voters, a charge they have repeated ad nauseum throughout his presidency. Over the course of his two presidential terms, nearly every religious reference Bush made - from gentle allusions to the biblical good Samaritan to off-the-cuff quotes about his own prayer life - has inspired warnings about his theocratic ambitions.
Yet something changed when Democratic Sen. Barack Obama began running for president: It became fashionable to mix faith and politics.
The shift first became evident during primary season, when Obama's deftness at couching arguments for liberal social policies in religious rhetoric set hearts aflutter among the Democratic Party's secular elites. His references to religious conversion, striving to "do the Lord's work" and plans to create a Kingdom of God "right here on Earth" would have given them shudders had the comments come from Bush. But coming from one of their own - a man whom the non-partisan National Journal ranked as the most liberal senator in America -Obama's rhetoric had a different ring. It had the ring of victory.
Democratic leaders long have lamented the "God gap" that has led churchgoing voters to favor Republican presidential candidates over Democrats. For decades, party leaders ignored it, blamed it on voter ignorance or cited it as proof that their party refused to pander to the sort of religious rubes who worry about abortion, gay marriage and the banishment of God from public life.
But losing five of the past seven presidential contests shook up Democratic strategists and pundits; not enough to spur serious policy changes on social issues, but enough to make them search for new ways to sell those policies to religious voters.
It's not an easy sell. Bush enjoyed double-digit victory margins among weekly churchgoers in 2000 and 2004, and those voters tend to reject the socially liberal policies of Democratic presidential candidates.
Obama, who hews to his party's liberal orthodoxy on such issues as abortion, shows no sign of substantively changing his stances. He knows that the enthusiastic support of his secular liberal base could not survive it. But his base can survive a little God talk.
Obama has made such talk a staple of stump speeches as he works to convince conservative churchgoing voters that he shares their values, despite a record that says otherwise. In doing so, Obama has escaped all but the mildest criticism from pundits who once saw theocracy behind every Bush statement.
When Obama recently trumpeted his decision to "let Jesus Christ into my life" and make "faith-based" social service a "moral center of my administration," warnings about theocracy could not be heard. Nor did they dominate airwaves after Obama announced plans to expand Bush's faith-based initiative. Instead, pundits and politicians whose rejection of Bush's initiative forced the president to scale back his plans praised Obama for making good on Bush's promises.
Although some secular liberals have criticized Obama's newfound religious zeal and right-leaning rhetoric, most have overlooked it. They recognize what many of his religious listeners may not: Talk is cheap, and action - especially a politician's track record of past action - is what matters most.
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An Initiative That Inspires Little Faith
The Baltimore Sun
C. Welton Gaddy
07/15/2008
Funding faith seems to be in fashion these days. President Bush highlighted his faith-based initiative in his most recent State of the Union address, and the day after the speech he visited a prisoner re-entry program in
Baltimore. Now Sen. Barack Obama has announced that, if elected, he would continue the faith-based initiative but under somewhat different guidelines; unlike President Bush and Sen. John McCain, Mr. Obama would not allow groups accepting tax dollars to engage in religious discrimination in hiring. That is an improvement, but it doesn't go far enough to safeguard against the pitfalls that doomed the Bush administration's faith-based initiative.
Religious charities have received government aid for charitable missions for decades, but only if the charity was a separate 501(c)(3) organization, apart from the church or denomination that supports it. Mr. Bush changed the law to allow government money to be given directly to houses of worship, and Mr. Obama's plan would continue this practice. We at the Interfaith Alliance hope Mr. Obama will change his mind, because establishing a separate charity is a crucial step that upholds the integrity of both religion and government.
When the government gives money directly to religious institutions, those funds are mixed with other private funds into a single pot of money. Thus, it becomes impossible for a church to say whether the government's money is being used for a soup kitchen, which is permissible, or for missionary work, which is not allowed.
And if the government needs to investigate waste, fraud, or abuse in a faith-based grant, it would have to investigate the internal affairs of that church. Government should not be in the business of sifting through a church's collection plates every Sunday.
Mr. Obama also needs to make clear that funds appropriated to faith-based charities would be done in a transparent and above-board manner. This would be a welcome change, because for seven years the Bush administration has clandestinely funneled money to faith-based groups on the religious right.
Under current White House policy, faith-based charities are supposed to be evaluated according to an objective rating formula, but former White House faith-based initiative staffer David Kuo confessed the truth. In his book, Tempting Faith, he writes, "It was obvious that the ratings were a farce. National organizations like Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America scored an 85.33 [out of 100] while something called Jesus and Friends Ministry from California, a group with little more than a post office box, scored 89.33."
We do not know how many other fly-by-night charities are receiving government funds, because President Bush's faith-based office is set up to avoid congressional oversight. But it's clear that Mr. Bush has used the faith-based initiative as a campaign tool to achieve his electoral aims.
Charities, whether religious or secular, deserve a real commitment. And the millions of needy people in America should never be forced to submit to a religious agenda to receive services. Mr. Obama had pledged to uphold these principles if elected, but those of us who recall how Mr. Bush's rhetoric differed from his policies will be watching closely.
The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy is president of the Interfaith Alliance in
Washington.
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Not-So-Great Expectations: A New Partnership That's Supposed To Aid Newly Released Prisoners Aims Too Low
Birmingham News (Alabama)
Editorial
07/15/2008
Alabama taxpayers have every reason to like Gov. Bob Riley's recent push to enlist more help for prisoners exiting state lockups. Not all of those reasons are selfless and kind.
The more help inmates get when they leave prisons, the less likely they are to burglarize our houses someday. And, of course, the less likely they are to go back to prison at our expense.
As it stands, more than a quarter of inmates are back within three years of leaving prison.
The Riley administration's Community Partnership for Recovery and Re-entry invites churches and other groups to help ex-prisoners rejoin society by providing them with counseling, mentoring, services or even direct financial aid.
For our sakes, as well as the prisoners' sakes, the partnership needs to succeed in a big way. So why are those involved in the partnership thinking so small?
''We're not even thinking that we can help everybody,'' said Bill Johnson, director of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, which helped create the partnership.
Indeed, the goal is to help only 1,000 former inmates annually - less than 10 percent of the 11,000 who are released every year.
That's pretty low expectations, especially considering the size and strength of the faith community in
Alabama.
It's true the thought of meeting the needs of 11,000 inmates may seem a tall order at first blush. But it's not as if every ex-con is going to require a church's major investment to make it on the outside. Some former prisoners have families that will provide much of the support they need to get back on their feet. And some simply might not need that much - just enough to tide them over.
Sometimes, for someone just released, the initial needs are as basic as getting an ID re-established. Or being assured a few meals. Surely, churches and nonprofit groups across this state could scrounge up a McDonald's gift card for more than 1,000 inmates.
Moreover, the prison system itself is starting to better prepare soon-to-be-released inmates for the free world. That also should lessen the load for outside groups.
The state's role in the partnership is supposed to be collecting information from various organizations about what services are available and then making sure inmates are aware of those services.
But to have a big impact, the state should cast a wide net and involve as many faith-based groups and other organizations as possible. It may be the groups won't answer the call to the level they could or should, and that would be a shame.
But it would be a bigger shame if the partnership sinks to the level of the state's own low expectations.
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Church, State and Favoritism--Faith-Based Programs Shouldn't Be Government's Right Hand
News-Journal (Daytona Beach, Florida)
News-Journal (Daytona Beach, Florida)
07/15/2008
When it comes to religion, the Constitution isn't vague. It singles it out -- twice: Once to prohibit government from making laws "respecting an establishment of religion," and once to prohibit government from interfering with "the free exercise" of religion.
Government has been good about respecting the second part, with obvious results. Religions flourish in the United States as in no other country. Government has been lousy about respecting the establishment clause. Belief in a Christian god is displayed on the national currency and routinely exhibited at government meetings at every level. Conservatives have spent the past 15 years trying to divert public money to parochial schools. Immediately after taking office in 2001, President Bush blew a hole in the establishment clause with his creation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. That it was to be a White House office, rather than one more executive agency added to the
Washington mix, gave it more weight and amplified Bush's tear-down-that-wall attitude toward the separation of church and state. Thomas Jefferson would have been justifiably livid.
Many supporters of the church-state wall, among them religious organizations that prize their independence and question government's eagerness to pair faith with public handouts, are surprised to hear Barack Obama declaring himself not only in favor of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, but in favor of expanding it. The Democratic presidential candidate said earlier this summer that "the challenges we face today -- from saving our planet to ending poverty -- are simply too big for government to solve alone."
That's never been in question. Some exceptions aside, nongovernmental organizations, secular or religious, businesses, nonprofit groups and, of course, individuals by the millions have always done, collectively, as much or more than government could to take on great challenges. The question is whether government should favor religious organizations to do so.
Skeptics were right to resist. Bush's initiative may have been well intended. Its execution was so disastrous that two of its executives -- John DiIulio Jr. and David Kuo -- quit in disgust and paired up earlier this year to sum up in a newspaper column Bush's broken promise: "Every nonpartisan study has concluded that the initiative has not delivered the grants, vouchers, tax incentives and other support for faith-based organizations that the president originally promised."
The problem hasn't been lack of money. The five federal agencies authorized to award faith-based dollars spent $24.9 billion between 2002 and 2005. But as Kuo described it in "Tempting Faith," his 2006 book about his White House experience, the faith-based office was used "to mount ostensibly 'nonpartisan' events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races." By 2006, The Washington Post reported, the administration had funneled at least $157 million in faith-based grants to organizations run by political and ideological allies. The Government Accountability Office the same year concluded that faith- based money was being awarded and spent unaccountably. And Bush made it permissible for organizations to receive government money despite discriminatory hiring practices.
Obama promises tothe politicization of the program, stop granting money to discriminating organizations and bring accountability to the system. He also would review the six executive orders that created the faith-based office and gave most federal agencies the power to award faith-based grants.
A better approach would be tothe special treatment faith- based organizations are receiving and apply a universal granting system through all federal agencies that neither discriminates according to creed, nor allows recipient organizations to discriminate -- whether in their hiring practices or in the clients they serve.
Faith-based initiatives such as Volusia and Flagler counties' homeless programs and
Family Life
Center, the domestic-violence shelter in
Flagler County, play an indispensable role. They should be eligible for federal grants. But faith should not be a criterion. Service to community, without favoring faith, should be. A name change would go a long way. A White House Office of Community Initiatives could honor faith. But as the Constitution requires, it wouldn't grant it special treatment.
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Letters from Readers--Faith-Based Groups Should Break Silence on Domestic Abuse
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
07/15/2008
"Fighting the denial: Faith-based initiatives are raising the shroud on domestic abuse" (July 11), a poignant article chronicling how religious communities do or do not respond to victims of domestic abuse, was timely. Pat and Ben Merold epitomize compassionate social action. The first step to combating abuse is for all of us to end the denial and recognize that victims are everywhere. Victims live in every ZIP code and represent every religious denomination and race.
It is critical when a victim finally gathers the courage to speak out and ask for help that the message she hears is that abuse always is wrong and never part of God's plan.
In 2008, Safe Connections launched a community outreach initiative to partner with area faith-based organizations. Safe Connections recognizes that clergy and religious leaders can not be experts on every issue. Safe Connections has several resources available free of charge, including a 24-hour help line (314-531-2003) that always is answered by a live person; individual counseling sessions for women who have experienced domestic violence, sexual assault or childhood sexual abuse; and a teen program about healthy relationships.
We urge people within the faith-based community to become educated about relationship violence so that they will know how to help victims in their midst. Simply by speaking publicly about the issue in their organizations, they can let victims who are suffering in silence know that they are not alone and that there are people who understand and can help. We applaud the efforts of the Merolds and encourage others to join them. Silence will not help the many women, children and men affected by this often well-kept family secret.
For more resources, contact Safe Connections at 314-646-7500 or www.SafeConnections.org.
Kim Eberlein,
St. Louis Former Board Chair, Safe Connections
Tracy McCreery,
St. Louis Board Chair, Safe Connections
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Obama Advocates Faith-Based Plan That Trumps Bush's
San Jose Mercury News (California)
San Jose Mercury News (California)
07/14/2008
Some Democrats have mocked Barack Obama's advocacy of faith-based social services as traitorous and opportunistic. It is, they say, part of a cloying strategy to move to the political center and cozy up to evangelicals.
In a presidential campaign, all statements and actions can be interpreted, rightly or wrongly, through a narrow lens of political motives. But critics are missing a larger point: What distinguishes Obama as a politician is a willingness to cut across generational, partisan and ideological lines to embrace powerful ideas.
Contracting with religious organizations to deliver social services has come to be identified with President Bush and conservative Christians he sought to involve in it. But the concept of supporting the secular work of multi-denominational groups like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Services has proved effective and often inspiring. It is based on the knowledge that government alone cannot revive a distressed community.
Bush and Obama agree on that point. But Bush politicized his faith-based initiative and underfunded it. Nine months after he announced it in 2001 with fanfare as the centerpiece of "compassionate conservatism," the Democrat he picked to lead the initiative, John DiIulio, quit in disappointment.
Obama would create a Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Its initial focus would be a $500 million per year program to provide summer education for 1 million poor children.
Faith-based organizations can be effective in galvanizing volunteers to become engaged in a community, to straighten out the lives of drug addicts and serve as role models for prison parolees and women on welfare. But, in accepting government money, groups must agree not to proselytize and to use grants for strictly secular purposes.
Bush crossed the line between church and state by signing an executive order permitting groups to consider religion in hiring. Obama would return to the pre-Bush policy requiring groups receiving federal money to comply with all local and state anti-discrimination laws.
Some evangelical groups, especially those that oppose homosexuality, have denounced this restriction as interfering with their beliefs. If that's a deal breaker for them, then they shouldn't seek the money.
As a community organizer who was funded by Roman Catholic charities in the early 1980s, Obama saw the vital role that churches can play in revitalizing neighborhoods. As a former law professor who taught Constitutional law, he understands the First Amendment pitfalls of funding religious groups.
Encouraging partnerships with churches, mosques and synagogues is consistent with his philosophy of government and activism. By not pandering to demands of religious groups, Obama's faith-based effort can succeed where Bush's faltered.
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