Monday Morning Faith-Based funding (Tah Dah!) - 7/28/08

Mon Jul 28 13:00:56 EDT 2008

- ENCOURAGING NEWS ON FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES

No matter which side of the aisle you're on, this ON RELIGION opinion piece
in today's USA TODAY is encouraging for the Marriage Education movement.  It
looks like whichever candidate wins, we can come out of mourning over the
loss of the Compassion Capital mini-grants and get ready to celebrate not
only a continuation - but possible expansion - of this vital faith-based
funding. 

> observers from both parties were surprised on July 1 when Obama declared that
> his concern about Bush's faith-based office was that it "never fulfilled its
> promise"  ‹ and then neatly pivoted to announce that an Obama administration
> would fix, EXPAND AND ELEVATE the faith-based initiative. . . .

> In Obama's faith-based speech, he noted that his early work as a community
> organizer in Chicago was partly funded by a Catholic group called The Campaign
> for Human Development. That experience is another reason for his support of
> faith-based initiatives: He actually believes in them. . .
> 

> "While these groups are often made up of folks who've come together around a
> common faith, they're usually working to help people of all faiths or of no
> faith at all," Obama said. "The fact is, the challenges we face today  ‹ from
> saving our planet to ending poverty  ‹ are simply too big for government to
> solve alone. WE NEED ALL HANDS ON DECK."
> 
> Because Obama is convinced the federal faith-based initiative is worth saving,
> he is in a position to critique the problems in the current system and insist
> on changes. One big step is to make sure that programs receiving government
> funds ACTUALLY WORK. From the beginning, Bush has talked about accountability
> for faith-based organizations, using the word "results" 16 times at one 2005
> conference. In 2002, then-HUD Secretary Mel Martinez declared that
> "faith-based organizations should be judged on one central question: Do they
> work?" Yet the president never put in place measures to track the
> effectiveness of programs receiving grants. . . .

> Unlike those Democrats who see in the faith-based initiative an overflowing
> slush fund, Obama has also recognized that THE REAL SCANDAL IS HOW SMALL THE
> POST OF MONEY for religious and secular non-profits have become over the past
> eight years. . . .
> 
> Even conservative supporters of the faith-based initiative, like former Bush
> aide Michael Gerson, agree with Obama's charge that the effort has been
> "consistently underfunded." In fiscal 2007, $2.2 billion was disbursed to
> faith-based groups. But while that figure may seem high, it is roughly
> equivalent to what religiously affiliated organizations like Catholic
> Charities and Habitat for Humanity received before Bush took office.
> 
> The Democratic nominee has said he would CONSIDER giving the office a seat at
> his Cabinet table and that the initiative would be the moral center of his
> administration, to "help set our national agenda."

These are the excerpts that gave me hope. Also makes me want to encourage
you to listen to the Dennis Stoica opening keynote which is all about how to
build in measures of ACCOUNTABILITY. Also, hope you'll listen to the Stoica
workshop on faith-based initiatives: Changing the World Through Marriage
Ministries.  Order as $9.95 downloads at
http://www.iplaybacksmartmarriages.com/
Or at 800-241-7785 

> Keynote: #758-001 -The California Campaign
> Dennis Stoica, MBA
> As California goes, so goes the nation! California has set a goal of reducing
> its divorce rate by 15%. Learn the steps it's taking to implement a state-wide
> Marriage Education saturation model, to make programs and services accessible
> throughout the state, and to carefully track the results. Californians: learn
> how to get involved. Everyone else: learn strategies to transform your own
> state, community, or setting.

> #758-220
> Changing the World Through Marriage Ministries
> Dennis Stoica, MBA
> Learn how and why Marriage Ministries are the most effective action churches
> can take to make a positive impact on the world. Don¹t just preach love, teach
> it! Includes a roadmap to success.

Here's the opening of the USA Today article and the link to read the full
piece and see the illustration:

Why Obama seized the faith-based mantle
USA TODAY
July 28, 2009
Page 11a

This wasn¹t just a matter of political opportunism designed to remove an
arrow from the GOP¹s quiver. The Democratic nominee believes in the Bush
program, and he¹s upping the faith-based ante with fresh ideas.

By Amy Sullivan

Even for a campaign built on audacity, the boldness with which Barack Obama
has picked President Bush's pocket and taken ownership of the faith-based
initiative is a bit breathtaking.

The effort to open up more federal grants to non-profits and religious
institutions is, after all, Bush's signature domestic issue. For eight
years, the president has consistently linked the cause to his personal
reputation, even boasting during the 2004 campaign that he alone was
responsible for changes involving faith-based programs: "Congress wouldn't
act, so I signed an executive order. That means I did it on my own." At the
last faith-based conference of his presidency in late June, Bush called the
faith-based office that he created "one of the most important initiatives of
this administration."

The words "faith-based initiative" are now so closely associated with Bush
that many Democrats long ago assumed the program was fatally flawed. So
observers from both parties were surprised on July 1 when Obama declared
that his concern about Bush's faith-based office was that it "never
fulfilled its promise"  ‹ and then neatly pivoted to announce that an Obama
administration would fix, expand and elevate the faith-based initiative.

Doubling down

It's fair to say Democrats were expecting a presidential nominee who would
vow to overturn the faith-based initiative once he reached the White House,
not one who doubled down on the program. But there are a number of reasons
for Obama to stray from the party line when it comes to faith-based
politics.

For one, by embracing the idea of partnerships between government and
faith-based institutions, Obama isn't moving to the right so much as
reclaiming an issue Democrats used to support. For decades, religiously
affiliated organizations like Lutheran Social Services and United Jewish
Communities received, without a hint of controversy, government funds to
provide social services.

When candidate Bush pledged in his first campaign speech in 1999 to "rally
the armies of compassion," he was not blazing new ground but rather
following in the steps of Bill Clinton, whose Cabinet secretaries had worked
closely with religious nonprofits and Al Gore, who had endorsed the funding
of faith-based organizations six months earlier. Even the most conservative
aspect of Bush's faith-based plan  ‹ the expansion of tax incentives to
encourage charitable giving  ‹ already had been championed by Hillary
Clinton at a White House conference on philanthropy.

The problem for Democrats emerged when Bush shifted tactics  ‹ holding up
the idea of a faith-based initiative not just as evidence of his
"compassionate conservatism," but also to forge the argument that Democrats
were hostile to religion.

The Democratic Party made a key tactical error in 2000 . . . .

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/07/why-obama-seize.html

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