WASHINGTON (ABP) — President Obama issued a long-awaited executive order Nov. 17 altering the government’s faith-based efforts, to generally positive reviews from those across the ideological spectrum on church-state issues. But some religious-liberty advocates expressed disappointment that the order avoided addressing the most controversial parts of the faith-based issue.
President Obama greets and thanks members of the President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships during a drop-by in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on March 9. (White House/Pete Souza)
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“These are important, substantive changes that are directly responsive to the recommendations of church-state experts across the ideological spectrum,” said Joshua DuBois, who directs the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. “With this executive order, we are strengthening and clarifying the legal footing of the government’s relationship with faith-based organizations and underscoring the important role of these organizations in serving individuals, families and communities in need.”
The nine-page order implements several recommendations made earlier this year by the White House Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The panel and several associated subcommittees were composed of prominent religious and community leaders — including several Baptists.
Among other actions, the order strengthens the guidance that religious groups receiving government funding receive to ensure that they do not violate the First Amendment’s ban on government promotion of religion. It also requires religious charities receiving government funds to make the clients they serve as fully aware as possible of their rights — including the right to ask for a non-religious service provider as an alternative.
Brent Walker
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“The president’s executive order makes major strides in more clearly identifying how government and religious organizations can work together effectively while honoring constitutional protections for religious liberty,” said Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and member of one of the subsidiary task forces that advised the council.
But, Walker and other advocates of strict church-state separation noted, Obama’s order did not implement one of the council’s most consequential recommendations — that churches and other deeply religious organizations wanting to perform secular social services using government funds create separate non-profit organizations to do so, thereby avoiding church-state entanglements.
“Today’s action ensures greater transparency in decision-making regarding the use of federal money for religion-based initiatives but fails to require recipients of federal funds to form separate entities to assure no mixing of federal tax dollars and religious tithes and offerings,” said Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance and preaching pastor at Baptist-affiliated Northminster Church in Monroe, La., in a press release issued shortly after the White House announced Obama’s order.
The order also did not address what may be the most contentious part of the debate over government funding for faith-based charities: Whether religious groups that receive federal dollars to perform ostensibly secular social services may then discriminate on the basis of religion when hiring employees for those programs.
As a candidate in 2008, Obama promised to reverse President George W. Bush’s policy of government-funded religious groups to take faith into account when hiring. But, since taking office, White House officials have taken a more cautious approach to the question. While church-state separationists have pressed Obama to overturn the policy in one fell swoop, administration officials have instead said federal agencies would address concerns over discrimination in hiring on a case-by-case basis.
“This admittedly divisive issue cannot be kicked down the road forever,” Walker said. “The president missed an opportunity on this point. It’s simply wrong for the government to subsidize religious discrimination.”
But conservative groups that have, in the past, supported religious charities’ right to discriminate on the basis of faith in hiring for government-funded positions, praised Obama’s order.
“The government is right to partner with faith-based organizations that have expertise in solving community problems, such as hunger, poverty, homelessness and drug addiction,” said Galen Carey, director of government affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, in a press release. “We welcome the president’s order, which builds on policies and good practices developed over three administrations of both political parties.”
Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.