by Dan Gilgoff

Faith has Played Larger Role in Obama White House | iHaveNet.com
© Paul Tong

Faith has played a larger role in Obama's White House in the first 100 days than in any other president's

The conventional wisdom was that George W. Bush was the most faith-based president in recent history, by a long shot. Citing Jesus as his favorite philosopher and Billy Graham as a mentor, Bush won evangelical voters in numbers not previously seen.

In office, he launched a controversial office of faith-based initiatives and consulted religious leaders in developing science policy. Bush routinely opened cabinet meetings with prayer and acknowledged conferring with "a higher father" before going to war in Iraq.

How remarkable, then, that religion might be playing an even bigger role in Barack Obama's administration.

While Bush invited megapastor Rick Warren to low-key White House functions, Obama had him deliver the invocation at his internationally televised inauguration. Bush encouraged White House prayer groups, but Obama begins public rallies with the recitation of a White House-commissioned prayer. Obama has quickly expanded Bush's faith-based initiatives to include an advisory council of religious leaders weighing in on matters as diverse as abortion and Middle East peace.

"This administration has used faith more overtly than any other in its first hundred days," says Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "That includes Bush."

But rather than appeal mostly to evangelicals as Bush did, Obama is reaching out to a broad spectrum of believers and nonbelievers.

Early decisions

He is carving out a bold new role for faith in the White House, which aides say aims to dial down the decades-old culture wars. The project may wind up drawing more religious voters into the Democratic fold. But it also threatens to alienate the Democratic base, which polls show is much less religious than the GOP's. Given the important role that religion and church-based organizing have played in Obama's own biography, though, the president is unlikely to abandon his quest for a middle way for faith in government and politics.

"My sense is that these efforts give a fairly accurate portrait of what the president really believes," says John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. "Some conservative Christians worry he's a wolf in sheep's clothing. I think that's overblown."

Obama's most substantive move on religion so far has been launching his own version of Bush's faith-based initiative office, tasked with helping religious groups get federal dollars for social service projects for the needy. Less than one month into office, while presiding over two wars and a struggling economy, Obama took time to roll out his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Its expanded mission includes reducing demand for abortion, promoting responsible fatherhood, and facilitating interfaith dialogue, particularly with the Muslim world.

While giving the office more influence, the Obama team has strived to placate its secular critics by pledging greater accountability. "We're not judging success by the amount of money that flows out," says Joshua DuBois, the office's executive director, "but by how we're helping those most in need: the number of folks who received mortgage counseling or have been trained for jobs."

But in a sign of how politically fraught the faith-based office is, the administration has delayed making the most contentious decision surrounding it: whether to allow religious groups to hire only fellow believers with federal funds, as they could under Bush.

"This is the 800-pound gorilla," says Americans United's Lynn. "Bush's office completely disregarded the separation of church and state, and nobody sees any change from that yet." Resolving the issue is an early test of Obama's ability to bring the culture wars' two sides together.

Differing opinions

The other big test on that score is whether the office can succeed in its goal of reducing demand for abortion while avoiding new limits on abortion rights.

The faith-based office is partnering with the White House Council on Women and Girls to find common ground among abortion-rights opponents and supporters around abortion reduction.

"If these policies are enacted and the number of abortions actually declines, it would really help the president because he'd have a tangible result," says the Pew Forum's Green. "The pro-life community would have a much more positive view of the Democrats and might work with them more on issues like poverty."

If the administration fails to deliver on abortion reduction, however, cultural conservatives who helped Obama win in red states like Indiana and North Carolina may abandon him in 2012.

As it works to bring religious leaders and concerns into the policymaking process, the administration has probably paid even closer attention to faith-based symbolism and messaging.

Gay rights groups and liberals pressured Obama to rescind his inaugural invitation to Warren because of the pastor's support for a gay marriage ban in California. Obama's refusal sent a clear message to evangelicals and other cultural conservatives that he respected their values. And in announcing he would lift federal limits on embryonic stem cell research by executive order, a move that riled religious conservatives, Obama laid out a faith-based rationale.

"As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering," he said, citing the research's potential to yield cures for debilitating diseases. Like Bush, Obama included religious leaders at his signing ceremony on embryonic stem cell research.

Such overtures are unlikely to gain the support of most white evangelicals, 73 percent of whom backed John McCain last November. But they may win some over and will very likely appeal to political moderates from other faith traditions, especially Roman Catholics, whom Obama won last year.

That kind of stagecraft can also help prevent the evangelical animus that plagued Bill Clinton in the second half of his administration and John Kerry in the 2004 election.

"This administration understands that they can't actively antagonize religious groups or be seen as insensitive to religious concerns," says Southern Baptist Convention public policy chief Richard Land, who has worked with presidents going back to Ronald Reagan. "They get that in a way that the John Kerry and Howard Dean wing of the party don't."

This helps explain why Land, a religious conservative who was close to the Bush White House, gets regular phone calls from DuBois, Obama's faith-based office director.

The administration's sensitivity on faith is also evident in the types of messages it avoids. When he reversed the Mexico City policy, a ban on federal funds for family planning providers abroad who offer or support abortion, Obama did so quietly, on a Friday evening. When Clinton lifted the same ban shortly after his 1992 election, he scheduled it on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, inflaming antiabortion groups (George W. Bush reinstated it).

"Obama's something of a puzzle to evangelicals who don't like some things he's done on abortion but can't bring themselves to hate him," says William Martin, author of With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America.

But whether Obama can bring together a diverse coalition of ordinary Americans to get past the culture wars is the question.

So-called values issues are among the deepest dividing lines in the electorate.

Many antiabortion groups have already attacked Obama's abortion-reduction plan as all talk.

Liberal groups, meanwhile, recently blasted the administration for inviting former Indianapolis Colts Coach Tony Dungy, who endorsed a gay marriage ban in Indiana, to join the faith advisory council. Dungy, an evangelical, declined the offer, citing scheduling conflicts with council meetings.

For now, such setbacks are unlikely to deter Obama.

As someone who said last year that he prays "to be an instrument of God's will," the president appears to be operating as a true believer.

 

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