Obama's Religion Problem: White House Funnels Money to Discriminatory Religious Groups

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Obama's Religion Problem: White House Funnels Money to Discriminatory Religious Groups

Obama's Religion Problem: White House Funnels Money to Discriminatory Religious Groups
Taxpayer dollars are continuing to be dispensed to religious groups via a secretive and controversial government office.
By Sarah Posner
This article originally appeared in Conscience magazine, published by Catholics for Choice.
May 13, 2011

After President Barack Obama gave a congratulatory shout-out to Joshua DuBois, director of his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFBNP), at the National Prayer Breakfast in February, Georgetown University religion scholar Jacques Berlinerblau wondered in the pages of the Washington Post "what exactly that office is doing -- a never-ending source of confusion, and even awe, among reporters, policy analysts and professors in Washington, DC."

Obama first launched the OFBNP in February 2009, shortly after taking office. At the time, he mostly kept policies from the Bush administration in place, including maintaining the arrangement of having a faith-based office in the White House, as well as offices in twelve federal agencies. Religious contractors and grantees would continue to receive federal funding under the "level playing field," a Bush-era term meaning that faith-based organizations would not be at a disadvantage relative to secular organizations in applying for federal funds. In one major change, Obama created an advisory council, to be made up of religious and community service leaders, to develop recommendations on how to improve the functioning of the office and increase partnerships between the government and faith-based groups in addressing societal problems.

Over the two-year life of Obama's OFBNP, however, the most controversial aspects of the Bush initiative have remained in place. Although Obama had promised in a July 2008 campaign speech that he would rid the OFBNP of two of its most pressing constitutional problems -- allowing faith-based organizations receiving federal dollars to discriminate in hiring, and allowing federal money to be dispersed directly into houses of worship -- he has done neither. Indeed, many of the evangelical leaders whose approval Obama sought during his run for the White House opposed those reforms, making their feelings known to campaign staff shortly after his stump speech.

In the two years since the OFBNP launch, church-state separation and civil liberties advocates, acting individually and through the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination (CARD) have repeatedly pushed Obama to stop funding organizations with discriminatory hiring practices, as well as ending the practice known as direct funding, which permits taxpayer money to flow directly to houses of worship, rather than requiring them to establish a separate nonprofit entity. Instead, on the hiring discrimination issue, Obama said the Department of Justice (DOJ) would review instances of alleged discrimination on a "case-by-case basis," and has merely encouraged recipients to set up separate nonprofits.

Read the full article at:

http://www.alternet.org/news/150910/obama%27s_religion_problem%3A_white_house_funnels_money_to_discriminatory_religious_groups/?page=entire