Faith-based partnerships
Under President Obama, the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships has kept an extremely low profile. Given the excessive enthusiasms of the Bush administration in establishing the office, achieving a low profile has been in many respects an appropriate goal.
The Bush administration heralded the funding of faith-based groups as somehow the solution to the nation’s social ills. It imagined that faith groups would provide cheaper and more effective versions of government programs. Captivated by this vision, it vastly overestimated the capacity of religious groups to address systemic social problems, and it took a casual approach to the First Amendment issues that attend government partnerships with religious groups.
Obama’s OFBNP has focused on clarifying the rules of such partnerships. It has explained, for example, that religious organizations that receive federal funds are still entitled to choose leaders from their own religious traditions and to express an explicitly religious statement of mission. They are also able to retain religious symbols in their buildings that house government-funded programs. At the same time, the OFBNP has said that government funds cannot be used to support explicitly religious activities such as prayer, worship and proselytizing, and it has stressed that recipients who object to a program’s religious character have the right to an alternative provider.
