Daily Archives: Thursday, February 5, 2009

 President Barack Obama said Thursday he will establish a White House office of faith-based initiatives that will show no favoritism to any religious group and adhere to the strict separation of church and state.

Addressing the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama spoke of how faith has often been a divisive tool, responsible for war and prejudice. But, he said, ”there is no religion whose central tenet is hate” and all religions teach people to love and care for one another. That is the common ground underlying his faith-based office, he said.  http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/02/05/washington/AP-REL-Obama-Faith-Based.html

De Tocqueville noted the role of faith groups in the organization of American communities.  Not surprising as it would have been difficult to miss.  But America isn’t notably different from other western (or other) societies in this feature of social and civic arrangements.   What appears to make the US somewhat unique here is, of course, the constitutional first ammendment.

I expect that the news item above will not land well on some ears.  Folks who’d like a very severe separation between state and religious expression will hold that any small crack in the wall is cause to man the ramparts with vats of boiling polyunsaturates.  And there’s another group of people  who believe that any hindrance to the prostelitizing of The One True Faith must axiomatically be satanic (no free-enterprise competition between THE godly faith and those ungodly others, thank you very much). 

Personally, I’m more towards the boiling-oil camp even while considering that in its extremity it is utterly foolish in its blindness to how human groups actually function and in how faith groups (eg Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, Ghandi) have been agencies forwarding charity, empathy, inclusion, equality. 

Unfortunately, the term and notion of “faith-based” has been pretty seriously sullied and degraded by recent history.   One has to dig in a bit to a study of Marvin Olasky, his theology and his connections, and his key role in informing Bush’s policies.  For example, Olasky edits and writes for World Magazine whose national editor is Bob Jones IV.  95% of its readership is caucasian, 45% homeschool, and polled as a group they held James Dobson and Focus on the Family as most well-thought of world individual/movement (see Joan Didion’s ”Political Fictions”, p. 299-230).

Further, though the claim was advanced (by Olasky and by Bush and other tied to the administration and conservative movement) that Bush’s faith-based funding was going to a broad range of religious groups, subsequent studies showed that this wasn’t even close to being truthful – almost all funding went to evangelical or catholic agencies. 

But there was something else besides what could be reasonably described as religious bigotry going on here as well.  The funding that was directed towards these groups had previously been going, in large part, to groups which were considered (by Bush’s political strategists) as left-leaning (unionized government workers in health, social work and education particularly and NGOs).  ”Faith-based initiatives” was, as a set of programs, utilized as a key tool in the project to defund the left and thus, gain electoral advantages at all levels of government.

So, those of us who tilt towards the boiling oil camp ought to understand this history and recognize 1) that what the Bush people set up was divisive, destructive and hugely cynical (big surprise) and 2) that this history needs to be unwound and 3) that the truly good impulses that commonly mark many faith communities CAN be validated and supported to ends which are charitable and beneficial to the community.

Note:  Didion’s book “Political Fictions” ought to be on your bookshelf for analyses beyond this issue.  However, on this issue, you can purchase for $3 the relevant essay “God’s Country” from the NYRB if you are interested (and I won’t like you if you aren’t) http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=13857

Update: The WP has a piece on this too: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/05/AR2009020500834.html?hpid=topnews