WASHINGTON (ABP)—President Obama’s first proposed budget signals a dramatic shift in prioritizing domestic poverty, centrist and liberal Christian leaders said.

Nonetheless, some expressed concerns that portions of the proposal did not go far enough in alleviating poverty. And many conservative Christian leaders have echoed the criticisms of other conservatives—that Obama’s proposal is far too large and would create the most massive expansion of government social-service programs since Lyndon Johnson’s administration.

Jim Wallis, founder and CEO of Sojourners, termed inequality between the haves and have-nots “a sin of biblical proportions” in the United States.
Budgets are “moral documents” that reveal the nation’s priorities and values, Wallis said. For Christians, he said, there is “a religious obligation” to look out for the poor and vulnerable in society.

“For a long time we’ve almost thought that we don’t need to bring values to bear or virtue to bear on our economic decisions—the ‘invisible hand’ of the market would make everything come out all right—but that hasn’t happened,” Wallis told reporters. “I would say the invisible hand has let go of the common good.”

Wallis insisted the common good “has not been part of our decision-making for a long time now.”

“This budget is a step, I think a dramatic step, to try to restore a sense of the common good,” he said.
Wallis and other faith leaders applauded money in the budget for health care, the environment, education and increased foreign aid, but they also voiced concerns about the proposal they plan to address in coming weeks.

Candy Hill, senior vice president of social policy and government affairs for Catholic Charities USA, questioned the president’s proposal to cut tax deductions for charitable giving for Americans in the top income brackets. She said most people who make contributions to Catholic Charities don’t do so for a tax break, but because they support its mission and care for the poor.

Noel Castellanos, CEO of Christian Community Development Association, also lamented the budget does not include funds for immigration reform.

“In the Latino community you are going to hear more and more outrage and concern about the fact that no policy change means that we’re going to rely on this enforcement-only strategy that divides families through ICE (the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security) raids and creates more havoc of people who are victims of a system that is broken,” Castellanos said.

But the leaders on the call said the particulars matter less than the overall budget trend.

“This budget clearly is an attempt to reverse a trend,” Wallis said. “For three decades we’ve had a growing trend of massive inequality in this country. Those who have been promoting that trend have said that policies, regulations and practices which enhance and benefit the wealthiest among us will eventually benefit us all.”

“I think that has proven to be false,” he said. “The central moral issue in this budget, and in American politics right now, is whether we should begin to reverse the massive trend toward growing inequality after three decades.”

Wallis said it is time for the government to stop helping “the undeserving rich.”

“We’ve had this notion of the undeserving poor for a long time,” Wallis said. “I’m saying now there has been a class of undeserving rich, who have been helped far more than they should be helped.”

Wallis called the proposed budget “a fundamental moral shift.”

“We have our concerns,” he said. “But I think, fundamentally, the moral issue is whether this trend of inequality can now be halted and reversed, and we can begin to rebalance the budget more in the direction of the common good.”
 
 

WASHINGTON (ABP)—In a groundbreaking free-speech case, the Supreme Court said the city of Pleasant Grove, Utah, can’t be forced to accept the gift of a monument to a small religious sect’s precepts—even though the town already displays a donated monument to the Ten Commandments in its city-owned Pioneer Park.

But in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, the opinion of a unanimous court also made clear the decision turned on whether the Decalogue monument was government speech or private speech—not on the religious content of the speech itself. That means the existing monument could be open to a challenge under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which bans government endorsement of religion.

The court’s decision overturns an earlier one by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A panel of the lower court had said the sect, called Summum, has as much right to erect a monument in the park as the Fraternal Order of Eagles did in the 1960s, when it donated the Ten Commandments monument.

Leaders of the sect, based in nearby Salt Lake City, asked Pleasant Grove officials in 2003 to display the monument to the “Seven Aphorisms of Summum,” which the 33-year-old group says were handed to Moses on Mount Sinai along with the Decalogue.

The courts long have established that government entities providing public forums for private speech—such as speakers’ corners in city parks—cannot discriminate in what sorts of speech are allowed. But the Supreme Court said the Ten Commandments monument and other privately donated displays in the park have effectively become government speech, and therefore, the city can refuse to endorse some messages.

Some supporters of church-state separation, including the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, had filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the justices to take up the church-state issues the case raised.

“Because of the peculiarities of Tenth Circuit jurisprudence, Summum couched its legal claims principally in the language of free speech and viewpoint discrimination,” the brief said. “The proper locus of its complaint is, however, the Establishment Clause—which the Founders intended to serve as the principal bulwark against the government’s resort to rank denominational prejudice.”

WASHINGTON—A move to require broadcasters to provide equal time to all sides of controversial issues has religious radio programs worried, even though no formal proposal has been introduced and the White House likely wouldn’t support it.

At issue is the idea of reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, which policed public airwaves from 1949 to 1987 in hopes of giving voice to all sides of an issue. The Federal Communications Commission scrapped the policy when it was judged ineffective and a possible violation of free-speech rights.

Although fears about a resurrected Fairness Doctrine have circulated for years, concern grew in recent months after Democrats won the White House and solid majorities in Congress.

Two Senate Democrats—Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Tom Harkin of Iowa—both recently made comments to radio host Bill Press about reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

That’s enough to worry Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy on Focus on the Family Action. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson built his career on the airwaves; Focus programs reach 220 million listeners in 155 countries, according to the group.

“The idea that serious politicians would try to take a huge bite out of the First Amendment takes my breath away,” Minnery said. “I hope they try it, because I believe this is a fight they cannot win, and it will expose the liberal element for what it is—highly intolerant.”

Michael DePrimo, special counsel for the Mississippi-based American Family Association, said reinstating the Fairness Doctrine would quell Christian talk radio.

“We wouldn’t want to run another program with a contrary viewpoint. That would defeat the purpose of our ministry,” DePrimo said. “It would be very problematic for us to give equal time to those who do not share our religious beliefs.”

What’s more, Ashley Horne, a federal policy analyst for Focus on the Family, said the Fairness Doctrine would gut Christian programming of any Christian content touching on controversial issues.

“They would rather not air a topic on abortion or homosexual marriage because that would require them to air time on a group that violates their beliefs,” she said.

Still, all the talk about resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine is just that—the idea has yet to gain serious traction on Capitol Hill, at the FCC or the White House. In fact, President Obama is skeptical about the need for a renewed Fairness Doctrine.

“As the president stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated,” White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com.

Even some liberal groups, including the Washington-based Center for American Progress, don’t support the Fairness Doctrine.

“Simply reinstating the Fairness Doctrine will do little to address the gap between conservative and progressive talk …,” the center said in a position paper.

In addition, legal scholars aren’t sure the Fairness Doctrine would survive a court challenge—never mind the thorny legislative and political process of reviving it.

“I think there are some significant hurdles to adoption,” said Gene Policinski, vice president of the First Amendment Center of the Freedom Foundation.

Even so, religious broadcasters are nonetheless rallying their supporters to keep the Fairness Doctrine dead. The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative law firm founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, has collected 230,000 signatures in support of the Broadcaster Freedom Act, introduced by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., which would prevent the Fairness Doctrine from returning.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — An elementary school in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., is being sued for censoring the word "God" out of posters promoting a student-led prayer event.

A lawsuit filed March 3 by the Alliance Defense Fund said administrators at Lakeview Elementary School ordered students and parents either remove signs promoting a "See You at the Pole" event or edit out religious language. With too little time to redo the posters, parents in the suit complied by covering the phrases like "In God We Trust," "Come and Pray" and a theme Bible verse with green paper.

Filed on behalf of 10 parents and the children, the lawsuit claims school officials violated the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights both by limiting their free speech and establishing hostility toward their religion. It seeks injunctive relief, nominal damages and curt costs.

It isn't the first time the school has landed in hot water over religion. Last year a federal judge ruled the school unconstitutionally endorsed religion by allowing a group of parents to pray in the school cafeteria and pass out fliers to students during school hours. 

U.S. District Judge Robert L. Echols ruled that such accommodation excessively entangled the school with religious purposes of Praying Parents, a loose-knit organization of parents who gather to pray for the school. Echols said the constitution demands that public schools be neutral toward religion and that by promoting the group administrators effectively promoted its religious views.

Echols said students could still make flyers for "See You at the Pole," though. School policy allows such posters as long as they contain a disclaimer that the event is not sponsored by Lakeview.

For that reason, some members of the Praying Parents group said they were astonished last September when a school employee told them that posters their children made could not be displayed because they contained the word "God."

The parents obscured the religious phrases as directed but later complained about what they viewed as censorship and an attempt to belittle their religion. They said their children want to participate in future public prayer events but now fear reprimand if they do.

"Christian students shouldn't be censored for expressing their beliefs," Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Nate Kellum said in a press release about the lawsuit. Kellum said school officials "appear to be having an allergic reaction to the ACLU's long-term record of fear, intimidation and disinformation" with regard to religious expression in public schools. 
 
Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said he sympathizes with school administrators attempting to negotiate complicated church-state issues amid competing voices, but based on what he knows about the case, "It looks to me like the school clearly overreacted" by censoring religious content altogether.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press. 

WASHINGTON (ABP) — A coalition of religious leaders who oppose the United States’ use of torture in the fight against terrorism called March 3 for a “truth commission” to investigate government policy and allegations of inhumane actions against terrorism detainees under the previous administration.

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture released the statement, signed by 23 prominent religious leaders from a wide variety of faith traditions, on the eve of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings scheduled to delve into the subject.

“We call for an impartial, nonpartisan, and independent Commission of Inquiry,” the statement said. “Its purpose should be to gather all the facts and make recommendations. It should ascertain the extent to which our interrogation practices have constituted torture and ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.’ Understanding the causes, nature and scope of U.S.-sponsored torture is essential for preventing it in the future and eliminating it from our system without loopholes. U.S. law will determine the extent of any criminal culpability.”

It continued: “As people of faith, we know that brokenness can be healed — both in individual lives and in the life of the nation. All religions believe that redemption is possible. Learning the truth can set us on a path toward national healing and renewal.”

Baptist signers of the statement were Stan Hastey, minister for mission and ecumenism at the Alliance of Baptists; and David Gushee, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights and professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta. Gushee also writes a weekly column for Associated Baptist Press.

The call came a day after Justice Department officials released nine previously classified memoranda, produced by lawyers for President Bush, outlining sweeping presidential powers to circumvent legal constraints established by Congress on interrogation techniques and other aspects of detainee treatment.

Bush’s White House claimed the authority described in the memos in response to the post-9/11 terrorism threat. Some torture opponents and civil libertarians have said the powers claimed by the memos went even further than they thought Bush’s administration had.

Several similar memos are believed also to exist, but remain classified.

The Judiciary Committee hearings, scheduled to begin March 4, will explore creation of a formal commission to investigate government policy on interrogation techniques under the Bush administration. The panel’s chairman, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, has called for such a body. So has his House counterpart, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).

While President Obama followed through on a campaign promise to revoke controversial Bush policies on interrogation and treatment of terrorism detainees, the White House has rebuffed calls by many torture opponents to investigate Bush officials.

Related ABP story:

Religious torture opponents pleased, concerned by Obama executive order (1/22)

WASHINGTON (ABP) — President Obama's first proposed budget signals a dramatic shift in prioritizing domestic poverty, centrist and liberal Christian leaders said in a teleconference with reporters March 2.

Nonetheless, some expressed concerns that portions of the proposal did not go far enough in alleviating poverty. And many conservative Christian leaders have echoed the criticisms of other conservatives — that Obama’s proposal is far too large and would create the most massive expansion of government social-service programs since Lyndon Johnson’s administration.

Jim Wallis, founder and CEO of Sojourners , termed inequality between the haves and have-nots "a sin of biblical proportions" in the United States.

Wallis said budgets are "moral documents" that reveal the nation's priorities and values. For Christians, he said, there is "a religious obligation" to look out for the poor and vulnerable in society.

"For a long time we've almost thought that we don't need to bring values to bear or virtue to bear on our economic decisions — the ‘invisible hand’ of the market would make everything come out all right — but that hasn't happened," Wallis told reporters. "I would say the invisible hand has let go of the common good."

Wallis said the common good "has not been part of our decision-making for a long time now."

Dramatic step 

"This budget is a step, I think a dramatic step, to try to restore a sense of the common good," he said.

Wallis and other faith leaders applauded money in the budget for health care, the environment, education and increased foreign aid, but they also voiced concerns about the proposal they plan to address in coming weeks.

Candy Hill, senior vice president of social policy and government affairs for Catholic Charities USA, questioned the president's proposal to cut tax deductions for charitable giving for Americans in the top income brackets. She said most people who make contributions to Catholic Charities don't do so for a tax break, but because they support its mission and care for the poor.

Immigration reform left out 

Noel Castellanos, CEO of Christian Community Development Association, also lamented the budget does not include funds for immigration reform.

"In the Latino community you are going to hear more and more outrage and concern about the fact that no policy change means that we're going to rely on this enforcement-only strategy that divides families through ICE [the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security] raids and creates more havoc of people who are victims of a system that is broken," Castellanos said.

But the leaders on the call said the particulars matter less than the overall budget trend.

"This budget clearly is an attempt to reverse a trend," Wallis said. "For three decades we've had a growing trend of massive inequality in this country. Those who have been promoting that trend have said that policies, regulations and practices which enhance and benefit the wealthiest among us will eventually benefit us all."

"I think that has proven to be false," he said. "The central moral issue in this budget, and in American politics right now, is whether we should begin to reverse the massive trend toward growing inequality after three decades."

"Stop helping the undeserving rich" 

Wallis said it is time for the government to stop helping "the undeserving rich."

"We've had this notion of the undeserving poor for a long time," Wallis said. "I'm saying now there has been a class of undeserving rich, who have been helped far more than they should be helped."

Wallis called the proposed budget "a fundamental moral shift."

"We have our concerns," he said, "but I think, fundamentally, the moral issue is whether this trend of inequality can now be halted and reversed, and we can begin to rebalance the budget more in the direction of the common good.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press. Robert Marus, ABP’s managing editor and Washington bureau chief, contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could lead to the first major church-state decision under the panel’s current makeup.

The justices announced Feb. 23 they would hear Salazar v. Buono (No. 08-472). The case involves a cross — a predecessor of which was first erected as a World War I memorial in 1934 — standing on government-owned land in California’s Mojave National Preserve.

The current version was built of painted metal pipes by a local resident in 1998. The next year the National Park Service, which oversees the land, denied an application to build a Buddhist shrine near the cross.

The agency studied the history of the monument and, determining that it did not qualify as a historic landmark, announced plans to remove it. Congress intervened with a series of amendments to spending bills attempting to preserve the cross.

In 2001 Frank Buono, a former Park Service employee who once worked at the preserve, filed suit with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. They claimed that the cross violated the Constitution’s ban on government establishment of religion.

A series of federal court decisions ruled against both the cross and the government’s attempts to preserve it through legislative maneuvers. In 2007, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a 2003 law that ordered the government to give the parcel of land the cross sits on to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in exchange for a privately owned plot elsewhere in the park.

“We previously held that the presence of the cross in the preserve violates the Establishment Clause [of the First Amendment], wrote Judge Margaret McKeown in that decision. “We also concluded that a reasonable observer aware of the history of the cross would know of the government’s attempts to preserve it and the denial of access to other religious symbols.”

McKeown said even an observer who didn’t know the monument’s history would assume that it was a government symbol, because the vast majority of land in the area is owned by the government — even if a private organization actually owned the small plot on which the cross stands.

“Under the statutory dictates and terms that presently stand, carving out a tiny parcel of property in the midst of this vast preserve — like a donut hole with the cross atop it — will do nothing to minimize the impermissible governmental endorsement.”

Supporters of the cross — including the VFW, the American Legion and other veterans’ groups — argue in a brief that a decision allowing removal of the cross would endanger other religious symbols on federal property, such as grave markers in national cemeteries.

The last time the court handed down decisions involving religious displays on government property was in 2005. That was before Chief Justice John Roberts took over for the late William Rehnquist and Justice Samuel Alito replaced retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

O’Connor — considered a moderate on church-state issues — voted against Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky and Texas. Alito is likely to be more open to such monuments on public property.

But the case may turn on a different issue — whether Buono has the legal standing to assert the case in the first place. The high court’s 2007 decision in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation significantly limited most potential plaintiffs’ ability to sue over government endorsements of religion.

The justices won’t hear the Salazar case until their 2009-2010 session begins in October. While President Bush’s administration defended the cross, President Obama’s administration may have a view of the First Amendment more in line with the 9th Circuit’s. They could withdraw the appeal altogether or simply choose not to defend vigorously Congress’ attempts to preserve the cross.

–Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington Bureau Chief for Associated Baptist Press.

Related ABP stories:

Supreme Court denies taxpayers ability to sue Bush over faith-based funding (6/25/2007)

Supreme Court offers split decisions in Ten Commandments cases (6/27/2005)

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Want to be almost certain you’ll have religious neighbors? Move to Mississippi.

Prefer the least religious state? Venture to Vermont.

A recent Gallup Poll, based on more than 350,000 interviews, finds the Magnolia State is the one where the most people—85 percent—say “yes” when asked “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”

Less than half of Vermonters, meanwhile—42 percent—answered that same question in the affirmative.

Joining Mississippi in the top “most religious” states are other notches in the Bible Belt—Alabama at 82 percent, South Carolina at 80 percent, Tennessee at 79 percent and Louisiana and Arkansas, both at 78 percent.

Others at the top of the religiosity ranking included Georgia and North Carolina at 76 percent and Oklahoma at 75 percent. Texas and Kentucky tied at 74 percent.

New England predominates in the top “least religious” states. Following Vermont are New Hampshire at 46 percent, Maine and Massachusetts at 48 percent, Alaska at 51 percent and Washington at 52 percent.

“Clearly, states in the South in particular, but also some states in the Southwest and Rocky Mountains … have very religious residents, and New England states in particular, coupled with states like Alaska and others, are irreligious,” said Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of The Gallup Poll.

The reasons, however, are far less clear, observers said.

For example, some might attribute the religiosity of Mississippi to the high percentage of African-Americans—long known for being comparatively highly religious—who live there.

“Mississippi is still No. 1, even if we look only at whites,” said Newport. “Whites in Mississippi are also very religious.”

Overall, Gallup researchers found 65 percent of all Americans said religion was important in their daily lives.

The total sample of 355,334 U.S. adults, including respondents with land-line telephones and cellular phones, had a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point. Some states had margins of error as high as plus or minus 4 percentage points.

65 percent of all Americans said religion was important in their daily lives.

Newport was surprised one state—Utah—did not make the “most religious” list, given the state’s large Mormon population.

“They apparently have two kinds of people in the state,” he said. “They have the very religious and devout Mormon population, but it also looks like they have a lot of nonreligious people.”

Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, said Gallup’s findings reflect research conclusions from the upcoming American Religious Identification Survey, which he is working on with other scholars.

“New England is now slightly ahead of the Pacific Northwest in terms of the high rate of unchurched people,” said Silk, co-author of One Nation, Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics.

Although evangelicalism may be making some inroads in Western states like Washington and Oregon, he attributes the predominance of New England states in the “least religious” category more to other demographic trends in the Northeast.

“What we are finding … is a considerable drop in New England in the Catholic population,” said Silk, whose center is based in Hartford, Conn.

And it’s a matter of them moving away from the church, he said, not the region.

“Catholics are holding their own nationwide because of Latino immigration but, relatively speaking, there’s little of that in New England,” he observed.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Seven score and four years ago, Abraham Lincoln stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and said North and South alike must suffer for the sin of slavery.

“If God wills that (the war) continue until … every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, so it still must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether,’” Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, quoting the Psalms.

Called “Lincoln’s Sermon on the Mount,” his 1865 address has been deemed the most religiously sophisticated presidential speech in American history. And it was delivered by a backwoods lawyer with just one year of formal schooling who never joined a church.

As the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth approaches on Feb. 12, the 16th president and his unconventional faith continue to inspire and to confound. Churches, community centers and colleges across the country are celebrating the bicentennial by pondering Lincoln’s words.

Meanwhile, a raft of recent books attempts to restore religion to historical accounts of Lincoln’s life after a generation of scholars shrugged off his spiritual side.

“I call it the presence of an absence,” said Ronald C. White Jr., author of A. Lincoln, a biography published in January that aims to restore the missing pieces of Lincoln’s “spiritual odyssey.”

“People don’t deal with his religion. It is the great hole in our study,” White said in an interview.

Lincoln didn’t make things easy for historians. He was reticent and often inscrutable about his personal faith. Moreover, his ideas changed over time, as he dealt with the deaths of two sons and the pressure of the presidency amid the Civil War.

Most historians agree on this much: Lincoln never was baptized, never joined a church, and rarely, if ever, talked about Jesus.

"Not a technical Christian" 

“He was a religious man always,” said Lincoln’s widow, Mary, after his death, “but he was not a technical Christian.”

That hasn’t stopped every stripe of believers from claiming honest Abe as one of their own. Spiritualists, atheists, Christians and even Jews have all tried to cast Lincoln as a member of their tribe as well.

“Sometimes the battles over these things are rather sharp, very sharp as a matter of fact,” Dewey Wallace, a professor of religious history at George Washington University, told a conference of religion reporters last fall. Like the Jesus Seminar, the academic search for the “historical Jesus,” scholars endlessly sift through each chapter of Lincoln lore, Dewey said.

Ironically, the man who became one of the most religious American presidents had little use for faith as a young man, according to historians. Mocking the emotional sermons of the evangelical preachers who blazed across the frontier, Lincoln often angered his pious Baptist father.

Political handicap 

When Lincoln ran for Congress against one of those preachers, Methodist circuit rider Peter Cartwright, in 1846, his early apostasy became a political handicap. To fight a whispering campaign that he was an “infidel,” Lincoln published a handbill denying that he was “an open scoffer at Christianity.”

“That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true,” Lincoln wrote.

“But I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular.”

Despite his doubts, Lincoln had great respect for the Bible, one of the few books his parents possessed. He memorized large portions of it and consulted the book often in later years as he struggled with the “mere quiet power” of God.

Still, Lincoln never joined a church. Some say he just wasn’t a “joiner.” Others argue he couldn’t abide by complicated creeds. Many agree Lincoln wasn’t the type to open himself to the spiritual scrutiny often expected of church members.

“He was a very private man,” biographer David Herbert Donald said. “And not likely to get up in front of a congregation and say, ‘Let me recite the sins I have committed.’”

Growing spirituality 

Nevertheless, when Lincoln’s son Edward died in 1850, he turned to a Presbyterian pastor for answers. “Why did God take my son?” he asked Pastor James Smith of Springfield, Ill., at the beginning of their friendship.

Lincoln had a similar relationship with Phineas Gurley, pastor of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, where the president occasionally attended services. Lincoln wrote that his faith began to crystallize at this time, and White argues that bits of Gurley’s sermons can be found in the president’s speeches, including his famed second inaugural address.

Both Presbyterian churches Lincoln attended preached predestination and the sovereignty of God, a belief he inherited from his Baptist parents and held in one form or another for most of his life. Broadly put, it means God, not man, is in charge.

It was the source of Lincoln’s humility, historians say—the force behind his refusal to condemn enemies.

“Lincoln believed God was the author of his life and history,” said Jack Van Ens, a Presbyterian pastor, historian and actor.

“God drew out the plot and allowed Lincoln to punctuate the sentences.”

WASHINGTON (ABP) — President Obama announced a revamped version of his predecessor’s office on faith-based charities Feb. 5, restructuring it with a broad advisory council and vowing to pay close attention to church-state concerns.

“The goal of this office will not be to favor one religious group over another — or even religious groups over secular groups. It will simply be to work on behalf of those organizations that want to work on behalf of our communities, and to do so without blurring the line that our founders wisely drew between church and state,” Obama said, in announcing the overhaul during his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

He later signed an executive order creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships and the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Community Partnerships.

Nonetheless, some supporters of strong church-state separation expressed frustration that Obama did not immediately undo Bush administration policies that allowed religious discrimination in hiring for jobs funded through the program.

“During the campaign, President Obama made clear that religious organizations that receive federal money should not discriminate. We strongly support that principle, but it’s disappointing that today President Obama has missed an opportunity to put it into practice immediately,” said a statement from People For the American Way President Kathryn Kolbert. “It’s not about left or right: it’s about upholding the Constitution.  If churches accept federal funds, it’s deeply inappropriate for them to discriminate on the basis of religion in their hiring.”

According to some news reports Feb. 5, Obama will separately order the Justice Department to study the policy behind the Bush executive order, as well as other thorny church-state questions raised by the faith-based enterprise. Requests to the White House for the details of such an order were not returned by press time for this story.

In a July campaign speech, Obama promised that he would not allow religious discrimination under the program. But he has not elaborated on the promise since.

Some strong church-state separationist groups had hoped Obama would undo the office altogether. Under President Bush it became very controversial, with repeated accusations that Bush was politicizing the faith-based efort.

The office was formed in 2001 as one of the centerpieces of Bush’s domestic policy. He repeatedly attempted to expand the government’s ability to fund social services through churches and other pervasively religious charities.

Bush’s legislative attempts to push the initiative largely failed, but he nonetheless achieved many of his goals through administrative means, such as executive orders and revising policies on the agency level. The faith-based effort spreads across scores of federal departments, offices and programs.

Bush officials insisted that public funds distributed through the program would not go to fund proselytizing, worship or other clearly religious content. But church-state watchdogs said it would be difficult for agencies whose ministries were entwined with religious content to separate out the secular content suitable for government funds. And it would be difficult for the government agencies providing the grants to monitor such programs without entangling itself in the churches’ affairs.

A series of lawsuits — including a 2007 one that ruled a government-funded Christian program for inmates in an Iowa prison unconstitutional — raised questions about the ability of government officials to ensure constitutional standards in such programs.

Moreover, critics noted, religious organizations that provided primarily secular services — such as Catholic Charities or Head Start programs — had always been eligible to receive government funds through many social-service programs. They simply had to play by the same rules as secular grantees.

Leaders of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which has been a stalwart opponent of government funding for churches, welcomed Obama’s approach,but urged him to avoid what they viewed as Bush’s mistakes.

“Partnerships between government and faith-based organizations are a given,” said BJC Executive Director Brent Walker. “However, the rules of cooperation must be carefully crafted to protect religious liberty. I urge the president to ban religious hiring discrimination in government-funded programs. The BJC will continue to press for it.”

Other religious groups and leaders from across the spectrum praised Obama’s approach — and particularly the scope of the office and the creation of the advisory council.

Obama’s order “has moved faith and community outreach in a new direction that represents an improvement over what we saw during the Bush administration,” said Welton Gaddy, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance and pastor for preaching and worship at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, La.

Faith in Public Life, a centrist group, released a statement saying Obama’s creation of an advisory council for the project that is both religiously and ideologically diverse “captures a new moment in American faith and politics. Just as people of faith are transcending traditional categories of left and right, so is the President’s Council.”

The council includes executives of secular and religious charities, mainline Protestants, evangelicals, Catholics, Muslims and Jews. It also has members who strongly supported Bush’s approach to faith-based funding and those who strongly criticized it.

The enterprise’s scope also is much broader than that of Bush’s faith-based office, which focused only on government funding for charities. The executive order creating the office and council noted that it would help Obama find ways to reduce poverty, address teenage pregnancy, reduce the abortion rate, “support fathers who stand by their families,” and “work with the National Security Council to foster interfaith dialogue with leaders and scholars around the world.”

There are at least four Baptists among the 15 announced members of the panel, which will ultimately have as many as 25 members. Frank Page, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C. and the immediate past president of the Southern Baptist Convention is one. The panel also includes Melissa Rogers, a professor at Wake Forest Divinity School and former general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee. Rogers has long been a critic of government efforts to fund pervasively religious charities. Her church — Columbia Baptist in Falls Church, Va. — is affiliated with both the SBC and the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

The two other Baptist members of the council are from African-American Baptist backgrounds: William Shaw, president of the National Baptist Convention USA and a BJC board member; and Otis Moss, who recently retired as pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland.

Page, reached by telephone Feb. 5, said he anticipated that some of his conservative brethren in the SBC would criticize him for agreeing to serve on a body appointed by a president they dislike. But, he added, he was impressed so far by Obama’s approach to the issue and by assurances from the president and White House officials that the council would be a true advisory body in terms of formulating policy

“I want to be a voice in the process, and I think that’s why I took it. If I’m going to make a difference, I think I need a place at the table,” he said.

“I think that anyone who knows me knows that I’ll be true to a relatively conservative, biblically based viewpoint,” Page added. “I let them know that, and if at some time that my voice is nothing more than just a token conservative voice, I’ll resign.”

Related ABP stories:

Obama picks religious adviser DuBois for faith-based post; questions remain (1/30)

Bush administration leaves major mark on faith-based funding, experts say (12/3/2008)

On Bush’s faith-based programs, Obama says save best, ditch rest (7/6/2008)

Appeals court upholds ruling against funding for Christian prison programs (12/3/2007)

WASHINGTON (ABP) — On his 16th day in office, President Barack Obama signed a bill expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program by $32 billion, providing coverage to an additional 4 million children in families with incomes too high to receive Medicaid but who cannot afford to buy health insurance.

"Today marks a tremendous victory," said Katie Paris of Faith in Public Life, one of a number of religious groups that worked more than two years for passage.

The House of Representatives voted 289-139 in favor of the bill Jan. 14 and signed off on minor changes by the Senate Feb. 4 by a vote of 290-135. The president signed the measure into law later in the day in the East Room of the White House.

"This is only the first step," Obama said at the signing ceremony. "As I see it, providing coverage for 11 million children is a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American."

President Bush twice vetoed measures in the last Congress to expand the program, saying it would move the nation toward socialized medicine. Due to run out March 31, SCHIP currently covers about 7 million children across the country.

A federal program authorized under Title XXI of the Social Security Act, SCHIP provides matching funds to states while giving broad guidelines for individual states to set their own standards for designing and administering the program.

The new guidelines provide coverage for children from birth until age 19, said Jocelyn Guyer, deputy executive director at the Georgetown Center for Children and Families. It also allows coverage of pregnant women.

Prior to voting 66-32 to reauthorize SCHIP Jan. 29, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have guaranteed that states have the right to extend coverage to children before they are born. That would have put into a law a pro-life regulation implemented by the Bush administration in 2002.

Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, called rejection of the amendment "tragic" and "yet one more example that America is sadly becoming an anti-child culture."

Land also criticized the legislation expanding SCHIP as "nothing less than creeping socialized medicine by stealth," according to Baptist Press.

Previous House and Senate votes on the measure have fallen largely along party lines, but religious groups like the PICO National Network, a faith-based coalition of 1,000 congregations spanning the political spectrum to press for healthcare for the nation's children, say it is not a partisan but rather a moral issue.

"I am very conservative," Roy Dixon, a bishop in the Church of God in Christ and life-long Republican told reporters in a conference call Jan. 4. "I have been that way all my life, but I believe that our children definitely need SCHIP, and I'm very glad that it has passed and will be signed today."

With passage of the federal bill, action now turns to the states. "It's a good day for kids," Guyer said. "More work to be done, but a very good day for kids."

Funding the increase in part is a 60-cent tax increase on cigarettes, to about $1 a pack. Supporters say the provision adds to health benefits, because if tobacco products are too expensive it might reduce the number of people who smoke, while opponents say it unfairly burdens smokers.

"Increasing the federal tobacco tax to fund SCHIP is a win-win proposal that will help children get the health care they need, while also acting as a deterrent to young smokers and potential smokers," the American Medical Association said in a statement. "Higher tobacco taxes result in lower smoking rates in the long run, which will generate long-term health care savings-as fewer smokers means fewer people with strokes, heart attacks, cancer and other smoking-related conditions."

—Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press. 
 

WASHINGTON (ABP) — President Obama has selected a 26-year-old Pentecostal minister who served as his top religion adviser during the presidential campaign to head a revamped White House office on faith-based social services.

Critics of President Bush’s attempt to expand the government’s ability to fund the charitable work of churches expressed guarded optimism at the pick of Joshua DuBois to head the renamed White House Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The New York Times first reported Jan. 29 that DuBois, who joined the Obama campaign last year and served as its chief liaison with the evangelical Christian community, would head the new council. Other news outlets confirmed the news.

Burns Strider, who served as a religious strategist with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said Obama's choice of DuBois “is no surprise, but even more it’s an indicator of the importance placed on the goals and work of the faith office.” Strider, a Mississippi native who was raised Southern Baptist, now does consulting with the Eleison Group, which focuses on faith and politics.

Questions remain 

Advocates of strict church-state separation who have criticized direct government funding for explicitly religious charities and the way Bush used the faith-based issue were largely supportive of the expected appointment. But they said thorny questions remain for how Obama will handle the faith-based effort.

Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, described DuBois as “an impressive, compassionate advocate with whom I have had several opportunities to meet throughout the electoral campaign and the work of President Obama's transition team."

Gaddy said he would have preferred Obama close the office altogether, but since the president has chosen simply to re-tool it, “the question remains whether or not a change in the name of the office as organized by the Bush administration will reflect substantive change in the policies of the Obama administration that advocates for religious liberty find acceptable.”

Gaddy, who also serves as pastor for preaching and worship at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, La., said he was “cautiously optimistic” that Obama’s faith-based office would avoid the mistakes he thought Bush’s made.

“In recent conversations, senior transition officials assured me of President Obama's interest in establishing a council that protects religious freedom and assures constitutional separation between the institutions of religion and government,” he added.

Bush legacy 

Gaddy and other church-state separationists opposed many aspects of the initiative, which Bush used to expand the numbers of government social-service programs that provided grants directly to churches and other overtly religious charities. While Bush and his supporters contended that churches were unnecessarily being left out of the programs, opponents said religious charities were already eligible for such grants as long as they clearly separated their clearly religious work from their other charitable work.

Bush officials argued that religious organizations should be eligible for funds on the same basis as secular providers, while retaining their special rights to discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion.

That aspect of the program proved the most contentious in Congress, and Gaddy and others have expressed hope that Obama would reverse Bush actions allowing religious organizations receiving federal funds to take religion into account when hiring for jobs wholly or partially subsidized with government dollars.

Obama promised not to allow discrimination under the program in a July campaign speech, but he and his surrogates have said little about the issue since.

Given the new president’s background in constitutional law and assurances they have received from DuBois and other Obama officials, opponents of Bush’s faith-based efforts expressed hope that the new administration in general — and DuBois in particular — would handle the initiative in ways more sensitive to their concerns.

“Josh clearly has the background and interest in bringing diverse groups together for a common purpose,” Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee, said Jan. 30. “He recognized the need to carefully consider various approaches to the more difficult aspects of the policy. We were pleased that he listened to our suggestions for correcting some of the problems in the Bush administration’s approach and that he expressed a real desire to get things right.”

Another criticism of the faith-based push under Bush was that his White House politicized the effort. That included accusations of grants to conservative religious groups as payoffs for their support of Bush in the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Strider said efforts to increase funding for faith-based groups under President Clinton’s administration did not prove the political football they did under Bush, and that he expected DuBois and Obama to handle the effort in a similar fashion to Clinton.

“Politics doesn’t belong in the faith-based office, and we are fortunate President Obama chose a trusted adviser in Rev. DuBois who is committed to dialogue with the whole faith community and will focus on programs and services that work for all,” he said.

–Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.

Related ABP stories:

Bush administration leaves major mark on faith-based funding, experts say (12/3/08)

On Bush’s faith-based programs, Obama says save best, ditch rest (7/6/08)