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eNews for Faith-Based Organizations
Feb. 11, 2013 special edition

Editor: Stanley Carlson-Thies 
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In this issue
Feb. 14 Conference Call on Contraceptives Mandate Developments
Head of White House Faith-Based Office Steps Down
Bill to End FEMA Bias Against Houses of Worship in Reconstructive Help
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Feb. 14 Conference Call on Contraceptives Mandate Developments         

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On Feb. 1, HHS announced "proposed rules" concerning the applicability of the contraceptives mandate to faith-based service organizations, houses of worship and their integrated auxiliaries, and for-profit companies. The announcement proposes a possible slight broadening of the existing very narrow definition of an exempt "religious employer," an "accommodation" for non-exempt religious nonprofits that contract for employee insurance, and a number of possibilities to provide an "accommodation" for religious nonprofits that self-insure. For-profit organizations with conscience or religious freedom claims would remain fully subject to the mandate.

 

On Thursday, Feb. 14, 1-2 pm (EST), Gammon and Grange attorneys Scott Ward and Patrick Purtill, and IRFA's President, Stanley Carlson-Thies, are offering a free conference call on these latest developments, with an update on the nearly 50 lawsuits against the federal government because of the mandate.

 

HHS Contraceptives Mandate Teleconference:

Date:                                     Thursday, February 14, 2013

Time:                                     1:00-2:00 p.m. EST

Dial-in Number:                    (877) 889-2037 (no access code necessary)

 

Please RSVP to Paul Hartge of IRFA: [email protected].

Head of White House Faith-Based Office Steps Down     

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As the President announced at the National Prayer Breakfast, Joshua DuBois last Friday stepped down as executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, where he had served since the start of the Obama presidency. DuBois and his long-time aide, Michael Wear, who had earlier left to do religious outreach for the 2012 Obama election campaign and had worked for the 2013 Obama inauguration committee will, according to the New York Times, "create an organization to help government, nonprofit and private institutions develop partnerships with religious groups to solve social problems." DuBois also will teach and write a book of devotionals for public leaders, based on the scriptural passages he daily sent to President Obama.

 

A successor has not yet been announced.

The Christian Post wrote that "[s]ome Democrats reportedly think the White House should now choose a more senior person to head the office."

 

Joshua Good, who has worked for a contractor that helped the Obama Department of Labor engage with faith-based organizations, has noted how the federal faith-based initiative under President Obama and Joshua DuBois has stressed mobilizing faith groups in support of administration policy, in comparison with the Bush initiative's stress on equipping faith-based organizations to better carry out their works of service to their communities. Joshua Good writes:

 

"In my view, Obama's second-term faith-based office would be well-served by someone with a more programmatic bent: someone such as Ben Seigel, who previously worked at Seedco in New York City and now directs the Labor Department's faith-based program. With a decade more experience than Joshua, Seigel understands how the White House's organizing power could help these groups build their capacities, something that was emphasized during the Bush administration. That happens to be one of the office's core competencies, given its access to Cabinet-level agencies and the Domestic Policy Council."

 

eNews editor Stanley Carlson-Thies has recommended that in its second term the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships should explicitly and strongly take on the task of upholding the religious freedom of faith-based service organizations:

 

"[T]he President now supports gay marriage. And yet everyone knows that redefining marriage results in a long list of religious freedom conflicts. So the President, I suggest, could speak up for practical solutions to those otherwise inevitable pressures that can undermine faith-based foster care and adoption services, faith-based counseling programs, and religious organizations that have conduct standards for staff and a religiously based conviction about spousal benefits. . . .

 

"In the same way the White House faith-based office and the agency faith-based Centers would get abundant publicity and also do much good for the flourishing of faith-based services if they make it a top priority to fight inside the government and to the public to strengthen religious freedom rights whenever the administration pushes ahead to advance reproductive, LGBT, and other freedoms.

 

"Whatever you think about those advances, surely it is the case that to make progress in addressing poverty, sickness, and injustice in our sown society and around the world, the government must collaborate with faith-based as well as secular organizations. That means that in the second four years of the Obama faith-based initiative, special attentions needs to be paid to appropriately protecting the religious freedom of faith-based services."

 

To play that vital role, the White House office needs an executive director not only deeply informed about and committed to the wide range of faith-based service organizations and widely schooled and passionate about religious freedom, conscience rights, and pluralism, but also with a strong and positive public image and great heft among the powerful figures and groups of this administration. Who might that be?

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Bill to End FEMA Bias Against Houses of Worship in Reconstructive Help
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On Wednesday, the House of Representatives will take up on a fast track HR 592, a bill to clarify that when FEMA provides assistance to repair damaged buildings, it may not single out houses of worship for exclusion from the federal aid.

 

There is good precedent for including houses of worship in federal disaster recovery assistance--it was done, for example, after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing attack on a federal building--and the law governing FEMA's decisions does not exclude them. But neither does it explicitly include them. HR 592, the Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act of 2013, would simply clarify that houses of worship that are damaged by a natural disaster are eligible for FEMA repair assistance on the same basis as other nonprofit entities.  

 

Thanks to Nathan Diament, public policy director of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations for his leadership on this important equal treatment matter.  
 

 

For background see the Wall Street Journal op-ed and the NPR story

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The Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance works to safeguard the religious identity, faith-based standards and practices, and faith-shaped services of faith-based organizations across the range of service sectors and religions, enabling them to make their distinctive and best contributions to the common good.