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An October 8 story by Adelle Banks of the Religion News Service reported that the Obama administration is working on an executive order to change the church-state rules that apply when faith-based groups get federal funds.  These rules concern religious activities performed by federal grantees and the sorts of organizations that are eligible for federal funds.  The changes would presumably be those recommended by the Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships back in March, 2010.  The Council proposed some refinements and clarifications to the rules developed during the Bush and Clinton administrations, but no return to past practices that were biased against faith groups that officials regarded as "pervasively sectarian" or "too religious."

The story notes that the administration continues to review federal policy concerning religious hiring by faith-based grantees.  Congressional and activist critics of religious hiring are not satisfied with just a review of the issue:  they are loudly demanding that the freedom be curtailed as quickly as possible.  There remains a possibility that the lame duck Congress after the election will try to attach language banning religious hiring to the budget measure that needs to be passed by early December so that the federal government won't have to halt its operations.

What about the new members of the Advisory Council (the terms of the first group ended six months ago)?  Joshua DuBois, head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is quoted in the story as saying that they will be announced "pretty soon."  He also estimated that the federal government has implemented or is in the process of implementing about half of the 64 recommendations from the Advisory Council. 

And DuBois pointed out that, although his office may not be regularly in the news, "There's a tremendous amount of work going on helping faith-based organizations serve people in need."  That's a useful reminder:  the point of the federal faith-based initiative is not to make headlines or to throw around money, but rather to ensure that the federal government collaborates as effectively as possible with faith-based and secular private organizations in service of the poor and needy.

A Politicized Faith-Based Initiative?
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Who said it?  "Our Nation's enduring commitment to the universal human right of religious freedom extends beyond our borders as we advocate for all who are denied the ability to choose and live their faith. My Administration will continue to oppose growing trends in many parts of the world to restrict religious expression.  Faith can bring us closer to one another, and our freedom to practice our faith and follow our conscience is central to our ability to live in harmony."

Those sentences are from President Barack Obama's 2010 Declaration of Religious Freedom Day issued January 15, 2010. 

It is a robust declaration and especially noteworthy given other prominent administration statements that have substituted the narrow concept of "freedom of worship" for the much broader freedom of religion, which goes far beyond worship to the freedom to live life in accordance with one's deep convictions.

Joseph Knippenberg gives a good roundup of administration statements in "Words Matter: Freedom of Religion vs. Freedom of Worship."

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Director Davis Guggenheim of the much-praised new movie, "Waiting for Superman," seems to have sparked a renewed national conversation on the tragically underperforming urban public education systems--those "dropout factories," as some refer to the worst inner-city public schools. Guggenheim, who also directed the award-winning Al Gore documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," has expressed hope that his movie will create the political commitment to reform public education.  It masterfully weaves together broad statistics on systemic education problems with the stories of five children and families desperately seeking a way out:  a coveted slot in a high-performing, publicly funded charter school. 

The movie has a big shortcoming:  it fails to fully explore the important alternative that faith-based schools provide for many low-income families. For example, since 1970, the minority enrollment in Catholic schools has increased 250 percent. These schools graduate nearly all of their students, in sharp contrast to traditional public schools with a rate of around half that.  The charter schools praised in the movie--as they should be--account for only about 3 percent of K-12 students.  On the other hand, faith-based schools educate four times as many: roughly 12 percent of the students.

Yet rather than bend every effort to uphold and expand those successful faith-based schools, our nation is allowing private schools in general to be weakened by the economic crisis, and inner-city Catholic schools to dwindle as urban demographic trends make them less sustainable by the Catholic church. US governments give little support to faith-based schools, despite the important role they play.  Especially now, as we are reminded of how scarce good inner-city public schools are, maybe it is time to think again about how the nation can best support schools of every good kind--including faith-based schools.

(Thanks to Cheryl Buford for this story.)

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The Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government that took office in Britain last May has been in the news lately on this side of the pond because of the drastic cuts that Prime Minister Cameron is pushing through to bring government spending down.

But more is going on than an energetic effort to reduce government expenditures.  The coalition is also seeking a more energetic civil society:  more action by private organizations, citizens, and voluntary groups.  Indeed, as Jonathan Chaplin points out, judging from the coalition's policy declaration, it appears that a "subsidiarity" or "sphere sovereignty" redesign is underway:

"There is no straightforward transfer of authority away from central government to somewhere else. True, a raft of laws and several non-departmental public bodies are set for the chop. And many of the planned new measures are not imperative or indicative but permissive or facilitative. But whether the net effect of the overall program will be 'smaller' or 'bigger' government is not easy to predict . . . . This should come as no surprise. The laudable goal of restoring proper responsibility to individuals and to a range of public and nonpublic institutions is not the same as simply 'shrinking the state.' It requires the establishment of a multi-faceted framework of just public relationships across society as a whole. Sometimes this requires government to step back, at other times to step forward."

The coalition's effort to rebalance government and society will be even more noteworthy if the government finds a productive way to push back the UK's mighty secularist forces--the activists who somehow believe that freedom of religion means freedom from religion, using the secular state to compel social groups and individuals to follow the secular consensus.

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"Where for President Obama, love leads to government action, for President Bush, government has to leave room for love.  The former emphasizes his hope for the efficacy of governmental action, the latter his respect for its limits.

"This difference can be stated another way as well.  For Obama, faith-based and neighborhood groups are an extension of the government.  For Bush, they are a supplement to government.  For the former, they extend the reach of government into the lives of citizens, 'perfecting' a union that is at its heart a civic or worldly community.  For the latter, they pose a limit that government should both respect and support."

-- Joseph Knippenberg, "Faith in the Age of Obama," The City (Houston Baptist University), Fall 2010. http://www.civitate.org/