Obama Calls for Expanding Faith-Based Initiatives

WASHINGTON _ Courting evangelicals and other religious voters, Barack Obama called Tuesday for an expansion of President Bush’s initiative distributing federal aid to church-based groups that provide social services.

Obama promised the faith-based initiative would be “central” to his administration if he is elected.

“The challenges we face today _ from saving our planet to ending poverty _ are simply too big for government to solve alone. We need an all-hands-on-deck approach,” Obama said at a news conference outside a community ministry in Zanesville, Ohio.

The Obama campaign has been targeting evangelical and religious voters, many of whom have shown waning enthusiasm for the Republican Party as they have become disenchanted with the Iraq war and a younger generation of evangelical leaders has expanded the movement’s political agenda from divisive cultural issues to include such concerns as climate change, AIDS, genocide and poverty.

The Illinois senator could gain tremendous political advantage even if he does not win over the group but merely cuts into the commanding leads Republicans held among evangelical voters in Bush’s re-election. Exit polls in 2004 showed Bush was supported in 2004 by 78 percent of white evangelicals and by 61 percent among people of all faiths who attend religious services at least once a week.

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain comes to this campaign without the same strong connections to evangelicals as Bush. Unlike Bush, McCain has a history of strained relations with conservative religious leaders and does not have the life-changing story of personal salvation through evangelical faith that helped Bush bond with Christian conservatives.

Early in his Senate career, Obama gave a high-profile speech arguing on behalf of a greater role for religious faith in political debate, and he cultivated relationships with evangelical leaders. But, amid false rumors he is a Muslim and controversy over incendiary sermons delivered by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama struggled to win over white religious voters in his primary campaign.

Ohio, where Obama spoke Tuesday, is a battleground state in which the Republican campaign to mobilize religious voters played a key role in Bush’s 2004 victory there. Evangelical voters are a particularly important constituency in the Appalachian region of the state where Obama chose to announce the initiative.

Still, secular voters play an important role in the Democratic Party. And even as Obama’s program won advance praise from a former director of Bush’s faith-based initiative, a liberal-leaning group that advocates for separation of church and state criticized Obama.

“I am disappointed,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, “that any presidential candidate would want to continue a failed policy of the Bush administration. The president’s faith-based initiative has undermined civil rights and civil liberties and become deeply mired in partisan politics. It ought to be shut down, not continued.”

Obama promised to establish a President’s Council of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that would assist religious groups in obtaining federal funding to provide social services, such as summer learning programs. He said religious organizations would not be allowed to use taxpayer funds to proselytize and would be prohibited from violating federal civil rights laws in providing services or in hiring staff for government-funded work.

In answer to a reporter’s question, Obama said federal anti-discrimination laws do not cover discrimination based on sexual orientation. But Obama said he believes local laws in some states prohibiting discrimination against gays would apply to faith-based social programs funded with federal money in those states.

Obama criticized Bush’s faith-based initiative, a signature theme of Bush’s 2000 campaign, as “underfunded” and too often “used to promote partisan interests.” The Illinois senator said he would set up the program to encourage broad dispersion of the funding to include programs run by smaller congregations.

“Every house of worship that wants to run an effective program and that’s willing to abide by our Constitution _ from the largest mega-churches and synagogues to the smallest store-front churches and mosques _ can and will have access to the information and support they need to run that program,” Obama said.

The Obama campaign distributed a statement from John DiIulio, former director of Bush’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, praising Obama’s proposal as “a principled, prudent, and problem-solving vision for the future of community-serving partnerships involving religious nonprofit organizations.”

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