February 6, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
While President Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is less than a week old, there are some signs of how it will operate differently than how the Bush administration approached such efforts.
The changes include:
- An effort to include nonreligious charities. Mr. Obama set up a new council to advise him on social policy and helping the poor. It includes religious groups, such as Catholic Charities USA and World Vision, but also secular organizations like Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America. A list of the council’s members is available on the White House’s Web site.
- A greater emphasis on evaluation. In the executive order Mr. Obama signed to create the office, it says the office will “promote the better use of program evaluation and research, in order to ensure that organizations deliver services as specified in grant agreements.” One of the members of the new council is Public/Private Ventures, a research group in Philadelphia that has helped foundations and charities improve their antipoverty programs.
- A move to let the U.S. Department of Justice decide contentious questions about the relationship between the government and religious charities. Mr. Obama’s executive order says that the head of the faith-based office “may seek the opinion of the attorney general on any constitutional and statutory questions involving existing or prospective programs and practices.”
Robert W. Tuttle, a professor of law and religion at George Washington Law School, told The Chronicle that the White House “punted” on some policy concerns
For example, the Bush administration allowed religious organizations that receive federal grants to discriminate in their hiring based on religion. President Obama, during his election campaign, pledged to repeal the rule.
But instead of doing so in his new executive order, Mr. Tuttle said the president seems to have made a “general policy judgment not to raise a storm with any changes right now, and let things emerge more gradually — and as technical, legal opinions — over the coming months.”
“I would expect to see changes, both in terms of hiring and substantive restrictions on direct aid to houses of worship, but the changes will be subtle,” he said.
In addition to these changes, The Washington Post reports that the Obama effort will focus on interfaith relations, helping low-income fathers, and reducing the number of abortions.
Read The Chronicle’s article about the new office and its leader.
