WASHINGTON (RNS)—Jason Ford, 29, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., plans to spend Election Day at home this year.

A self-identified evangelical Christian, Ford cast his vote for President Bush in 2004 but said he and his wife plan to stay away from the polls Nov. 4, rather than vote for Sen. John McCain.

“I’m not going to be able to vote for anyone who doesn’t take a 100-percent stand against abortion,” said Ford. “So right now, I’m in a dilemma.”

Ford is concerned by McCain’s support for embryonic stem cell research.

“If he’s OK with that, then I’m not,” Ford said.

Ford is not alone. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, a leading conservative Christian voice, publicly vowed in February never to support McCain. He softened his stance recently—particularly after McCain announced his choice for a running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

Palin, a 44-year-old evangelical Christian, has been held up as a model of pro-life family values for her decision to give birth to her fifth child in April after learning he has Down syndrome.

Dobson called Palin “an outstanding choice that should be extremely reassuring to the conservative base” of the Republican Party.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said Palin resonates with evangelicals: “She’s one of us.”

Still, some conservative evangelicals remain less than enthusiastic about their options this fall. And conscientious abstention raises another ethical question: Do Christians have an obligation to vote?

Of the multitude of Christian denominations in the United States, few have a history of deliberate non-voting. Jehovah’s Witnesses, who demand full separation of church and state, may be the largest and most prominent example, along with some Anabaptist sects, such as the Hutterite Brethren.

Among evangelicals, Catholics and mainline Protestants, where civil participation is encouraged, debate centers on voting itself, a hard-won freedom that some say makes it a rite as well as a right.

Martin Marty, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, believes the obligation to vote can be traced back to biblical times.

“I think most churches would say there’s a great moral suasion behind it,” Marty said. “In Christianity, for example, as nervous as they might be about any particular civil order, the New Testament does say government was created by God. Most churches would say: ‘Yes, get out Tuesday; get out and vote.’”

Brian McLaren, a progressive evangelical leader, echoed Marty’s assertion, arguing that politics—and life—is a compromise between the lesser of two evils, or as he puts it, “the better of two less-than-perfects.”

Asked about the ethics of voting, former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee quoted the Gospel of Matthew: “Render unto God the thing’s that are God’s, and render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”

“Part of being a citizen in a society like ours, where we have the privilege of voting, is the responsibility to exercise that privilege,” Huckabee said. “To not do so is to sort of forego that part of what it means to be in a free society, and I think it would be unfortunate.”

Still, dissenters say there are reasons for staying home.

Todd Whitmore, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and a contributor to the new book, Electing Not To Vote, argues that while Christians are obligated to participate in civil society, the electoral system has been reconfigured to the point where voting is not always an appropriate or efficient means of participation.

“If you don’t allow for situations like (abstaining), then you basically make the earthly political order into a kind of God. The earthly political order is a good,” Whitmore said. “But it’s not the ultimate good.”

The motive behind not voting can be as significant as the act itself. A supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton would not be justified in staying home rather than support Obama, according to Whitmore, because that would be “a kind of political blackmail” rather than a moral stand.

Shane Claiborne, a young evangelical leader of the “emergent church” movement, offers a counter-culture antidote to the get-out-the-vote drives that fuel America’s civil religion. Claiborne, along with his friend Chris Haw, embarked on a nationwide “Jesus for President” tour this summer, reminding Christians that their primary allegiance is not to a partisan agenda, but to Jesus and his teachings.

Regardless of the merits of voting or not voting, however, conscientious abstainers make up just a small fraction of the electorate. According to John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, there is no historical precedent for large groups of religious voters deliberately staying home, and little evidence to suggest that will change in the fall.

“I think the bigger problem is not so much that folks abstain out of principle or to punish their party, but they just don’t have the same level of enthusiasm,” Green said. “Lots of people, whether they’re religious or not, need a lot of stimulus to get out and vote.”

WASHINGTON (ABP) — Adventist leader James Standish has been named the new executive director of a federal panel that advocates for global religious liberty.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom announced Aug. 20 that James Standish would lead the independent, non-partisan federal agency.

“The commission warmly welcomes James Standish,” Felice Gaer, chair of the panel and director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, said in a prepared statement. “Mr. Standish’s academic and professional background in human rights and religious freedom advocacy has made him a respected leader, both on Capitol Hill and among the widely varying constituencies whose causes he has represented.”

For his part, Standish said that it was “an honor to join the commission, particularly as we approach the 10th anniversary of the creation of the International Religious Freedom Act.” The 1998 law created the panel, which monitors religious-freedom conditions worldwide and advises Congress, the White House and the State Department on freedom-of-conscience issues.

“The magnitude and severity of violations of the universal right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion worldwide cannot be understated,” Standish continued. “I am honored to join the commission as it addresses some of world’s most pressing human rights crises.”

He was director of legislative affairs for the Seventh-day Adventist Church for seven years prior to accepting the commission’s top staff post. He succeeds Joseph Crapa, who died last year.

Standish earned an undergraduate degree from Newbold College in the United Kingdom, a master of business administration degree from the University of Virginia and a law degree from Georgetown University.

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (ABP)— Presidential candidates presented their positions on moral issues—and presented themselves as individuals of faith—during the recent Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency.

The two-hour forum, sponsored by Southern Baptist mega-congregation Saddleback Church and held on its main campus in Orange County, Calif., allowed presumptive presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain to express moral views on political topics to a largely evangelical audience. Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren served as host.

Rather than using a debate format, Warren questioned each candidate individually in front of an audience that paid $100 per ticket to attend.

Obama was first, with McCain sequestered so that he would not hear the questions. The pastor spent almost an hour with each candidate.

Although McCain appeared to be comfortable in front of an evangelical audience, Obama used biblical language twice, once referring to “the least of my brothers” (Matthew 25) and “acting justly and loving mercy and walking humbly with our God” (Micah 6:8).

McCain seemed to generate the most audience response, particularly regarding national security, abortion and tax issues.

Differences 

The candidates differed, sometimes markedly, in their responses to some questions. Regarding abortion, Obama is pro-choice, while McCain takes a pro-life stance.

Anti-abortion groups have repeatedly criticized Obama for his answer to Warren’s question about when he believed a child in the womb gained human rights. The Illinois senator responded, “…answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”

However, he pointed out he is pro-choice because he believes women don’t “make these decisions casually” and that they seek advice within their support systems. Abortion has a “moral and ethical element” that cannot be overlooked, he said.

Obama favors limiting late-term abortions, as long as a provision is included to protect maternal health, and recognized pro-lifers’ viewpoint. “[I]f you believe that life begins at conception … and you are consistent in that belief, then I can’t argue with you on that because that is a core issue of faith for you,” he said.

McCain declared a baby is entitled to human rights “at the moment of conception” and committed to a pro-life presidency, if elected.

War in Iraq 

The Arizona senator also played up his commitment to the ongoing war in Iraq and to the war on terror. He pointed to “radical Islam extremism” and al-Qaeda as evil and pledged to “get [Osama] bin Laden and bring him to justice.”

Asked about his views on war, Obama called his early stand against the Iraq war the most difficult decision he has made — in part because of the political consequences of the at-the-time unpopular stance, and partly because of putting “kids … in harm’s way.”

But both agreed that going to war is acceptable to protect American interests and national security.

Regarding tax issues, Obama advocates a tax cut for workers that earn under $150,000 and a “modest” tax increase for those who make more than $250,000.

McCain will push for a $7,000-per-child tax credit and a $5,000 tax credit for healthcare. He focused on government spending, rather than taxation, as the issue.

McCain and Obama responded similarly on some issues. Although they didn’t use the same wording, they both characterized America’s greatest moral failure as self-centeredness.

“[W]e still don’t abide by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me,” Obama said. “There’s a pervasive sense, I think, that this country, as wealthy and powerful as we are, still [doesn’t] spend enough time thinking about the least of us.”

McCain, in response to that question, noted, “Throughout our existence, perhaps we have not devoted ourselves to causes greater than our self-interest, although we’ve been the best at it of everybody in the world.”

Rather than being encouraged to “go shopping or to take a trip” after the Sept. 11 bombings in the United States, people should have been told to “expand” participation in helping others, to “expand the current missions that you are doing, that you are carrying out here in America and throughout the world,” McCain added.

The meaning of faith 

Both also pointed to their faith in Christ. For Obama, faith means “that Jesus Christ died for my sins, and that I am redeemed through him…. And I know that if I can get myself out of the way, that I can maybe carry out in some small way what he intends. And it means that those sins that I have on a fairly regular basis, hopefully will be washed away.”

McCain said his faith means, “I’m saved and forgiven.”

The candidates shared a similar approach to stem-cell research. Both emphasized the promise of adult stem-cell research, preferring to avoid the moral dilemma that research on embryonic stem cells poses.

Both agreed that marriage should be the union of a man and a woman and that the same-sex marriage issue should be determined at the state level. Obama believes in civil unions, he said, adding that his faith and his marriage are “strong enough that I can afford those civil rights to others.” He would not support an amendment to the federal constitution banning same-sex marriage nationwide.

Also a states-rights advocate on the issue, McCain said he would support an amendment only if the federal courts tried to enforce one state’s decision on other states as well.

McCain and Obama also agreed with Warren that stepping into regional conflict, such as in the Darfur region of Sudan, to stop genocide is acceptable. Obama emphasized seeking international support whenever possible.

Human rights 

Both said the United States should speak out against human-rights abuses and religious persecution. McCain said he would use the president’s “greatest asset” — the bully pulpit — as an advocate, following Ronald Reagan’s example.

While Obama favors speaking out, he said he also advocates joining international forums to work with others to point out abuse and lack of religious freedom and to “lead by example.”

Some religion-and-politics observers, such as Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, applauded Saddleback’s effort. Land believes the forum shows that evangelical influence has not declined in politics, according to a news release in Baptist Press, the SBC’s news outlet.

Others, such as the Interfaith Alliance, questioned whether the forum simply further blurred the lines between religion and politics.

Read more

Transcript of Obama and McCain appearance at Saddleback:

www.rickwarrennews.com/transcript/

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A nonpartisan coalition of more than 90 faith, community, labor and business organizations has launched an ambitious “$10 in 2010” campaign to raise the federal minimum wage within two years.

The Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign announced the “$10 in 2010” crusade with support from various denominations, including American Baptist Churches USA, the Episcopal Church, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Christian social justice group Sojourners.

The launch of the new “livable wage” campaign came as the federal minimum wage rose 60 cents to $6.55 on July 24, part of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. The hourly minimum will increase again in 2009 to $7.25 per hour.

“As people of faith, we believe there is no better way to urgently address the poverty that afflicts so many low-wage working people and their families than by raising the minimum wage,” said Paul Sherry, founding national coordinator of Let Justice Roll.

The two-day event, “Living Wage Days,” is set to kick off Jan. 10, 2009, featuring worship services and community events across the country.

Opponents argue an increased minimum wage will lead to more unemployment and layoffs, especially among young and unskilled workers. They also argue businesses will shift excess worker salary costs to consumers.

But Sherry said: “A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it. That conviction is at the very heart of the faith we proclaim.”

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (ABP)—Heather Rosema is precisely the kind of Christian voter Sen. Barack Obama covets.

Rosema, 41, chose George W. Bush in 2000, when she put greater emphasis on issues like abortion and gay marriage. This year, she intends to vote Obama.

Rosema, a member of Roosevelt Park Community Christian Reformed Church, sees a true man of faith in the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

“He talks about God very easily,” said Rosema, of Grand Rapids. “I think that I hear that from him. They seem to be a Christian family.”

Mike Langerak, meanwhile, remains unimpressed.

“Obama has got a good line. He presents himself well. But his walk does not follow his talk,” said Langerak, a 50-year-old roofing contractor from suburban Hudsonville who also attends a Christian Reformed church.

Troubling positions 

Langerak is most troubled by Obama’s support of abortion rights, but he doesn’t exactly sing the praises of Sen. John McCain, who has struggled to woo evangelical voters that flocked to Bush in 2004.

But Langerak is pragmatic when it comes to the Nov. 4 election. He wonders about other Christian voters who look askance at McCain’s conservative credentials.

“Some people said they would sit it out. … But if you do not vote for McCain, then you are in effect putting Obama in,” Langerak said.

Evangelical voters like Rosema and Langerak are a crucial constituency in the 2008 elections. In 2004, 78 percent of white evangelicals broke for Bush, and white Protestants overall voted for Bush by a two-to-one margin.

Few predict that kind of fervor for McCain, but it remains to be seen whether Obama can crack open the door to this GOP sanctuary.

Obama is not ceding evangelical votes. He visited Ohio this summer to tout expanded funding for social service programs run by religious groups.

"Do the Lord's work" 

He also has circulated a pamphlet that is striking for its stark religious appeal. Beneath a photo of Obama at a pulpit with a large cross in the background, it reads: “My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.”

There is political work to do, given a March poll that found 13 percent of Americans mistakenly believe Obama is Muslim. Beyond that, Obama may continue to be haunted by his controversial former pastor in Chicago, Jeremiah Wright, with whom Obama cut ties in May.

McCain has issues of his own with religious voters.

In his 2000 campaign for the GOP nomination, McCain took on the religious right as he faulted the “politics of division and slander” and called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance.”

Last year, McCain finished last of nine Republicans in a straw poll at the Values Voter Summit for conservative activists in Washington.

In May, he was forced to dump the endorsement of religious broadcasters John Hagee and Rod Parsley after Hagee suggested the Holocaust was God’s way of moving Jews to Israel, and Parsley called Islam an “antichrist religion” bent on world domination.

Can McCain close the deal? 

Since then, the McCain campaign has stepped up efforts to assure evangelicals he is their candidate. But Calvin College political science professor Doug Koopman said McCain may have trouble closing the deal, especially as younger evangelicals gravitate toward issues like global warming, human trafficking and poverty.

“He has never been their candidate,” he said. “John McCain has never been a religious exhibitionist.”

Koopman noted McCain’s libertarian strain of Arizona politics is not necessarily identified with conservative Christian concerns. What’s more, “he is independent and strong-willed and in some sense unpredictable on issues.”

Koopman also said Obama is tapping a new generation of evangelical leaders while old-guard icons such as Robertson are being wooed by McCain’s campaign. “They are running a 2000 campaign when it comes to 2008,” he said.

Of course, a mosaic of other factors—including turnout by black, young and new voters—will shape November’s outcome. But Koopman believes evangelicals could be pivotal.

Religion “is a way into voters being comfortable with a candidate,” he said.

If Obama can cut McCain’s margin among evangelical voters from 78 percent to 68 percent, the election may be his, Koopman said.

Corwin Smidt, a political scientist who directs the Paul B. Henry Institute at Calvin College, noted that a major survey of religious voters by the institute found a shift toward Democratic candidates.

“One of the things our survey revealed is that the kinds of issues that Obama is stressing would resonate with that particular group,” Smidt said.

Some evangelicals hint at buyer’s remorse after supporting Bush.

“I was fed up with the Clintons and all of the personal drama. I was looking for somebody to stand up for his faith,” said Sharon Smith, 40, whose husband, Reggie, is the pastor at Rosema’s church.

Smith, however, grew disillusioned by some Bush policies, including the decision to invade Iraq. She concluded that Bush “misused his faith” to justify political decisions.

She intends to vote for Obama because of his stand on issues like social justice and health care.

“I have come to a point where faith is a personal thing for each candidate,” Smith said. “I am looking at their stand on policies and how they are going to affect the nation.”

NEWARK, N.J. (RNS)—Making jokes and comments about a person’s religion can create a “humiliating and painful environment” and be a form of on-the-job discrimination, New Jersey’s highest court recently ruled.

The New Jersey Supreme Court said remarks about someone’s faith—even as a form of ribbing—cannot be tolerated in the workplace.

Clarifying anti-discrimination laws, the court declared a person claiming religious-based harassment does not face a higher legal hurdle than people who claim they were discriminated against because of sex or race.

“It is necessary that our courts recognize that the religion-based harassing conduct that took place … in this ‘workplace culture’ is as offensive as other forms of discriminatory, harassing conduct outlawed in this state,” Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote for a unanimous court.

The ruling holds the borough of Haddonfield in Camden County accountable for discrimination claims made by a Jewish police officer whose coworkers made crass comments—claimed to be poor attempts at humor—about his ethnicity and pasted stickers of the flags of Israel and Germany on his locker.

The decision is an important victory for all workers enforcing the principle of equality, said Jon Green, who represented the state chapter of the National Employ-ment Lawyers Association.

“There is no reason to make fun of people’s religion or race or anything,” said Attorney Clifford Van Syoc, who represented the officer.

Etzion Neuer, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of New Jersey, added, “It sends a clear and unequivocal message that anti-Semitism has to be treated with the same degree of severity as racial harassment.”

Others warned the decision would have a chilling effect.

“The court has raised the bar on the hostile work environment. Now you can’t even joke in the workplace,” attorney Mario Iavicoli said.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—With the Democratic presidential nomination in his grasp, Sen. Barack Obama is making a full-throttle push for centrist evangelicals and Catholics.

It’s a move that’s caught off guard some conservative evangelicals, who say they are surprised and dismayed to see a progressive-minded politician attempting to conscript their troops. At the same time, they say Sen. John McCain has done little to court their affections.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it before,” said evangelical author Stephen Mansfield, who wrote The Faith of George W. Bush and has a forthcoming similar book about Obama. “To be running against a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and to be reaching into the Christian community as wisely and knowledgeably as (Obama) is—understanding their terms and their values—is just remarkable.”

Recently, the Illinois senator held a closed-door meeting in Chicago with nearly 40 Christian leaders, including evangelical heavyweights like evangelist Franklin Graham, publishing magnate Steve Strang and megachurch pastor T.D. Jakes.

Obama’s campaign also is launching a grass-roots effort, tentatively called Joshua Generation, with plans to hold concerts and house meetings targeted at young evangelicals and Catholics.

Meanwhile, a new political action committee set to launch this summer, the Matthew 25 Network, plans to direct radio advertising and mailers to Christian communities while talking up Obama in the media. The group is not officially tied to the Obama campaign.

Obama’s emphasis on faith outreach plays to his strengths, campaign observers say. The senator is at ease speaking about religion and preaches a message of forging common ground with disparate communities.

Still, some religious leaders wonder if Obama’s Christian-focused outreach may alienate Jewish and Muslim voters, for example, not to mention the Democratic Party’s large secular wing.

“You really have to consider the question: What message does this send to people of other faiths?” said Romal J. Tune, a Washington pastor who works on religious outreach with the Democratic National Committee.

Joshua DuBois, Obama’s director of faith outreach, said the campaign is “not solely focused” on evangelicals and Catholics but “committed to reaching people of faith broadly and trying to bridge religious divides.”

Nonetheless, Obama has clearly learned a lesson from previous, unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidates: Ignore—or dismiss—evangelicals at your peril.

Despite the concerted push, Obama faces a tough task in trying to loosen the GOP’s hold on a majority of white churchgoers.

But Obama may have made inroads at the Chicago meeting with evangelical leaders, which one adviser described as a “Nixon goes to China” moment.

Abortion and gay marriage—issues on which the Illinois Democrat openly disagreed with many of the evangelical leaders in the room—dominated the discussion, participants said.

Still, Strang wrote in a blog, Obama “came across as thoughtful and much more of a ‘centrist’ than I would have expected.” Strang added he hopes McCain will host a similar gathering.

Mansfield sees similar political acumen in the Joshua Generation program. Often used as a “mobilizing phrase” among evangelical church youth groups, the “Joshua Generation” name refers to the biblical story of Joshua, who did what Moses could not—lead his people into the Promised Land.

“The impressive thing about Obama is that he knows this,” Mansfield said. “This is language you expect to hear at a youth rally, not from the presidential campaign of the most liberal member of the Senate.”

DENVER (RNS)—More than 90 evangelical leaders met in Denver this month and decided to support Sen. John McCain as the presidential candidate who most shares their values.

Participants in the meeting agreed they are concerned about issues like immigration and gun rights. But they determined opposing abortion and gay marriage are so central, they believed they have no choice but to support McCain.

“He would advance those values in a much more significant way than Sen. Barack Obama who, in our view, would decimate those values,” said Mathew Staver, dean of Liberty University’s law school, who spearheaded the meeting.

Participants also reached a consensus that they would send a letter to McCain, R-Ariz., encouraging him to consider former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as his choice for vice president.

“It’s not a demand; it’s a request,” said Staver, who couldn’t say when McCain would be contacted about Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor who resonated with some evangelical voters during the Republican primaries.

The meeting included conservative Christians from various sectors of evangelicalism, including African-Americans, Hispanics and younger evangelicals. Tim and Beverly LaHaye, the couple known respectively for their roles in the Left Behind book series and Concerned Women for America, were there, as were Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, former Christian Coalition president Don Hodel and Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, an Ohio organization affiliated with Focus on the Family.

But one person not invited was one of the movement’s most prominent voices, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, who recently blasted Obama’s politics and his theology and previously said he would not vote for McCain.

“I didn’t want this meeting to be centered on a personality,” said Staver, who added Dobson was working on a book.

Burress reported there was agreement to support McCain, but there were differing views about strategy. “There’s no question, everybody was on the same page that Obama was not an option,” he said.

Burress, whose Ohio group is preparing 2 million bulletin inserts for 10,000 churches about the two candidates’ stances, predicted Obama’s efforts to reach evangelicals will fall flat.

“The only evangelicals that he’s going to win over are those who have never read the Bible,” said Burress, who was one of a handful of conservative leaders who met with McCain on June 26 in Cincinnati.

McCain, who recently met with evangelists Billy Graham and Franklin Graham, has been urged by some evangelical leaders to increase his outreach to them. But the sentiment at the meeting was that evangelicals must speak up for him.

Evangelicals are trying to unify after a “fractious primary season” when no consensus candidate emerged as an evangelical favorite, Staver said.

“We will not allow our values to be hijacked by any political party, and we will not allow politics to divide us,” said Staver, founder of the Liberty Counsel, a conservative law firm.

WASHINGTON (ABP)—For years in foreign-policy circles, the United States was regarded as the world’s premier protector of individual liberty, promoter of democracy and champion of human rights.

WASHINGTON (ABP)—Veteran human-rights activist Felice Gaer will once again serve as chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom .

Gaer, a member of the independent federal panel since 2001, has twice been chair and twice vice chair of USCIRF. She is director of the American Jewish Committee’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights.

Gaer is a veteran negotiator on human-rights protections for international agreements and institutions, and was the first American to serve as an independent expert on the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

She replaces Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and director of its Evangelicals in Civic Life program. He also served twice as the commission’s chairman.

A bipartisan, independent federal agency that monitors and reports on religious-freedom conditions worldwide, the commission was established in 1998. It alternates its chairmanship between Republican and Democratic appointees. Gaer was appointed to USCIRF by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Cromartie was appointed by  President Bush.

The incoming and outgoing chairs traded compliments, according to a commission announcement.

“I am very pleased to see Felice Gaer returning to lead the commission,” Cromartie said. “Her expertise and stature as an internationally renowned advocate for respect for human rights and religious freedom will continue to enhance the commission’s impact.”

Gaer praised Cromartie’s leadership during a taxing time for the panel. “I commend Michael Cromartie on guiding the commission through a difficult year of transition, following the death of Executive Director Joseph Crap,” she said. “Visits to Vietnam, Turkmenistan, Iraq, and Syria, as well as hearings on Iran, Burma, and Iraqi refugees helped the commission make a mark on U.S. human-rights policy concerning severe violations of religious freedom.”

The panel also elected Cromartie and Elizabeth Prodromou as vice chairs. Prodromou is an international-relations professor at Boston University, where she is also a research associate at the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs.

Cromartie and Prodromou replace Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and Preeta Bansal, a New York attorney now in private practice who once served as that state’s solicitor general.

USCIRF officers serve one-year terms.

ZANESVILLE, Ohio (ABP)—Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s vow to carry on the best—and dump the worst—parts of President Bush’s so-called “faith-based initiative” has drawn mostly positive reactions from advocates of strong church-state separation—up to a point.

“I still believe it’s a good idea to have a partnership between the White House and grass-roots groups, both faith-based and secular. But it has to be a real partnership—not a photo-op,” Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery at a Christian community-service center in Zanesville, Ohio.

Obama, a former community organizer in Chicago, affirmed the core of Bush’s effort— to expand government’s ability to work with religious charities—while cautioning against political and constitutional abuses to which such an enterprise can be prone.

“As someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea—so long as we follow a few basic principles,” he said.

“First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize. … The people you help and you can’t discriminate against them—or against the people you hire—on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples and mosques can only be used on secular programs.”

Only those that work

Obama also said that, under his administration, federal funds would only support “those (faith-based) programs that actually work.”

In the Democrat’s speech, the clearest difference from Bush’s policy was whether religious groups could discriminate on the basis of faith in hiring when receiving federal funds.

“It was decidedly different on the issue of constitutional protections in hiring,” said Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “It says that … if you get a federal grant, you can’t use the money to proselytize or discriminate against the people you serve or the people you hire. So that’s a notable distinction from the policy pursued by the Bush administration.”

Hollman’s group has opposed Bush’s faith-based efforts on two counts—his attempt to have several federal laws rewritten in order to allow such discrimination and his efforts to promote funding of organizations that don’t strictly separate their religious functions from their secular ones.

But Obama’s speech demonstrated a broadly different understanding of the issue than has the rhetoric of Bush and his surrogates, Hollman said.

“It seems encouraging that he says: ‘Make no mistake, I believe in the separation of church and state,’” she said. “To me, that is signaling the importance of recognizing the constitutional principle and policy interest of protecting religious freedom while talking about the way government and religious institutions can be partners.”

Showed more sensitivity

Hollman added that Obama’s speech showed sensitivity to religious groups that express concerns about government funding churches, synagogues and mosques—also a departure from Bush’s rhetoric.

“There’s nothing here that indicates that those who would emphasize religious-liberty concerns (about the faith-based plan) somehow don’t count or don’t understand what we’re doing here or are missing the boat,” she said.

But while Obama’s speech called for closer attention to constitutional safeguards in administering the faith-based program, it also called for expanding the effort. He said he’d raise the profile of Bush’s White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

“I’ll establish a new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships,” Obama said. “The new name will reflect a new commitment. This council will not just be another name on the White House organization chart; it will be a critical part of my administration.”

Bush “short-changed” the very charities that he intended to help because the effort was sidetracked by politics, Obama contended.

“Support for social services to the poor and the needy have been consistently underfunded. Rather than promoting the cause of all faith-based organizations, former officials in (Bush’s faith-based office) have described how it was used to promote partisan interests.”

"Train the trainers"

Obama said his program would be structured to “train the trainers” through large, well-established charities that work with smaller religious and community organizations. He mentioned groups such as Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services.

That, according to one constitutional-law professor who has studied Bush’s faith-based efforts closely, is also a substantial departure from Bush’s scheme. Chip Lupu, a First Amendment expert who teaches at George Washington University Law School, noted that Bush’s program relied on “intermediary” grants for such capacity-building purposes —and that such grants sometimes went to conservative religious organizations. That left Bush open to charges of political pandering.

“There was a lot of criticism of the sort of intermediary grants as ways of including your friends in the spoils,” he said, noting one particularly controversial grant that was distributed through an organization founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson.

But using large religious organizations with long histories of operating like secular non-profits shows that Obama is interested in paying close attention to church-state concerns, Lupu noted. “If Obama is talking about bringing back major players like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services … they are faith-based in name, but not faith-based in practice,” he said.

However, Obama’s speech seemed to maintain support for direct government grants to churches and other strongly religious charities, so long as the funds only support secular services. The most ardent defenders of church-state separation oppose such funding.

Those grants continue to raise “serious issues of entanglement between religion and government,” said a statement from Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, said in a statement that Obama’s clarification of his views on church-state separation is “a step in the right direction, though I would like him to go further.” Specifically, Gaddy said, he would want Obama to be more explicit in rejecting direct government funding of churches and other thoroughly religious institutions.

And Hollman said the Baptist Joint Committee “would never commend (government) money going directly to houses of worship because of the risk of entanglement, both with practical and legal difficulties.”

But Lupu said it’s a sign of how far the public conversation on government funding for religious organizations has shifted in the last 10 years that the presidential candidates aren’t echoing those concerns.

“Neither Obama nor (his GOP opponent, Sen. John) McCain nor George W. Bush would say houses of worship are categorically denied form being grantees—and that’s a big change; that’s a big change that (almost) everybody accepts that,” he said.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith. Mike Huckabee and his “Christian leader” ads. John McCain and John Hagee. Hillary Clinton and her “prayer warriors.” Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright.

To put it mildly, the 2008 election has featured an extraordinary emphasis on religion, analysts and activists agree.

“There’s been more religious ferment in this election than any since 1960,” said Ralph Reed, the GOP strategist who helped build the Christian Coalition in the 1990s. “And I don’t expect that to come to an end.”

But recent weeks have demonstrated—to a degree not seen in previous elections—how the intersection of religion and politics can be fraught with peril for pastors and politicians.

Obama, D-Ill., resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ, the Chicago congregation he’s called home for 20 years, after fiery, racially tinged sermons by the now-retired Pastor Jeremiah Wright and a visiting white Catholic priest, Michael Pfleger.

On the other side of the aisle, McCain was forced to reject the endorsements of prominent Christian pastors Hagee of San Antonio and Rod Parsley of Columbus, Ohio, for their comments about Catholics, Jews and Muslims.

New era of scrutiny

In an age of unprecedented Internet scrutiny—with incessant blogs, YouTube videos and online access to archived sermons—pastors and politicians are facing a new era in American elections in which a pastoral endorsement quickly can go from a blessing to a curse.

And it’s not just the politicians who are feeling the heat.

“I suspect if you were in my shoes, it seems plausible at least that you wouldn’t want your church experience to be a political circus,” Obama told reporters May 31, just after he pulled his membership at Trinity. “I think most American people will understand that and wouldn’t want to subject their church to that either.”

Both sides have been burned by the extraordinary scrutiny in this year’s election. It was too much for Hagee, who withdrew his endorsement of McCain and vowed to stay on the sidelines for the rest of the campaign. Parsley, meanwhile, decried how statements by religious leaders were “being transformed into political weapons by the politically vicious and misguided.”

Fewer endorsements

Observers say the religious foment may lead to fewer endorsements—either those offered by pastors or ones sought by politicians.

John Hagee

“Clergy need to consider how it is they can endorse a candidate and still consider themselves to be prophetic,” said Romal J. Tune, president and CEO of the Clergy Strategic Alliances. “Someone once said, ‘A dog can’t bark if he has a bone in his mouth.’”

But why all the scrutiny? Why this year, and why these candidates?

Jim Wallis, the progressive evangelical activist who was host to Obama in 2006 for a prominent speech on religion and politics, said it was because Obama demonstrated more than a nominal interest in personal faith.

“If he were … not a Christian, not a person of faith and attended church kind of casually and nominally like many politicians do, this wouldn’t be an issue,” he said.

Eric Sapp, whose consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, has helped to build networks between Democrats and people of faith, said the scrutiny of Obama’s church demonstrates his faith outreach is taken seriously by political opponents.

“They’re terrified, so they’re going to lash out in nasty ways,” he said.

Shaun Casey, a faith adviser to the Obama campaign, said one result of this year’s campaign may be that churches will be pressured to develop a more independent voice.

More independent voice

“Churches are going to be more reticent about taking public stands and making endorsements, across the board,” said Casey, who also is a professor of ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington.

“It may force them to assert their independence, which is a good thing, theologically and politically.”

Many religious leaders have lamented for months that politicians and pastors were a bit too cozy, and they chastised the media for digging into otherwise-private issues of faith—favorite Bible verses, personal sins, what things candidates pray for.

Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister and president of the Washington-based Interfaith Alliance, said it’s long past time to focus on “real issues.”

“Obviously, neither Sen. McCain nor Sen. Obama wanted to move away from those religious leaders as long as their endorsements were helping them, but as soon as the endorsements started hurting them, then they scurried away,” he said.

That doesn’t mean the end of the debate on the appropriate role of religion in politics, or of politics in religion—but maybe a different kind of debate, observers say.

“I don’t think candidates can afford to hide from the role of faith in public life,” said Jennifer Butler, executive director of the Washington think tank Faith in Public Life. “I think they’re just going to have to engage it—and engage it wisely.”