Obama Speaking on Faith-Based Program
By JEFF ZELENY and BRIAN KNOWLTON
ZANESVILLE, Ohio ? With an eye toward courting evangelical voters, Senator presented a plan here on Tuesday to expand on President Bush?s program of investing federal money in religious-based initiatives that are intended to fight poverty and perform community aid work.
?The fact is, the challenges we face today ? from saving our planet to ending poverty ? are simply too big for government to solve alone,? Mr. Obama said. ?We need an all hands on deck approach.?
On the second day of a weeklong tour intended to highlight his values, Mr. Obama traveled to the battleground state of Ohio on Tuesday to present his proposal to get religious charities more involved in government programs. He delivered remarks after touring the Eastside Community Ministry here, a program providing food, clothes and youth ministry.
?I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square,? Mr. Obama said. ?But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups.?
In remarks and during an outdoor 30-minute question and answer session, Mr. Obama praised the idea of the Bush administration?s programs, but added: ?What we saw over the last eight years is the office has never fully completed its mission or fulfilled its promise.?
He thus embraced the heart of a program, established early in the Bush administration, that critics say blurs the constitutional separation of church and state. Mr. Obama made clear, however, that he would work to ensure that charitable groups receiving government funds be carefully monitored to prevent them from using the money to proselytize and to prevent any religion-based discrimination against potential recipients or employees.
Mr. Obama is also proposing $500 million per year to provide summer learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps for students. He proposes elevating the program to the ?moral center? of his administration, calling it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
He called for rules to make certain the new council wouldn?t violate the separation of church and state. Groups receiving money, aides said, would have to demonstrate the effectiveness of their programs.
As a former community organizer in Chicago where some of his neighborhood work was funded by a Catholic charity Mr. Obama has some familiarity with the issue.
Mr. Obama?s initiative Tuesday represented more an evolution than a shift in his position, but came at a time he has been re-centering his stances on several issues, angering some liberal supporters in the process.
The plan was met with praise from officials who crafted the Bush administration?s proposal, including John DiIulio, who in 2001 served as the director of Mr. Bush?s office on faith based initiatives.
?Senator Barack Obama has offered a principled, prudent, and problem-solving vision for the future of community-serving partnerships involving religious nonprofit organizations,? Mr. DiIulio said in a statement. ?He has focused admirably on those groups that supply vital social services to people and communities in need. His plan reminds me of much that was best in both then Vice President Al Gore?s and then Texas Governor George W. Bush?s respective first speeches on the subject in 1999.?
Mr. Obama and his advisers are seeking support among relatively moderate evangelicals and are trying to take advantage of signs that some conservative Christians are rethinking their politics, urged along by a new generation of leadership and intensified concern about issues including climate change, genocide, AIDS and poverty.
Mr. Obama?s presumptive Republican rival for the presidency, Senator John McCain, was flying Tuesday to Colombia on a trip meant to highlight his strong advocacy of free trade, notably of a U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement that Mr. Obama has criticized and which is stalled in Congress. The Arizona senator was to travel later to Mexico, where immigration is bound to be a core topic.
Mr. McCain, too, has supported faith-based initiatives. A spokesman has said that, if elected, the senator wanted faith-based groups to ?have at least the same standing as they have now.?
While evangelical voters, a sizable minority, generally vote strongly Republican, Mr. McCain has had a shaky relationship with the group. He met Sunday with one of the country?s best-known evangelicals, Bill Graham, and his son, Franklin, for what was described as an ?excellent conversation? but secured no endorsement.
Mr. McCain, who was raised an Episcopalian but switched to the Baptist church of his wife, Cindy, has never had the same levels of support among evangelicals as Mr. Bush enjoyed, not least because he once labeled the evangelical leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson ?agents of intolerance,? a characterization he has since backed away from.
Mr. McCain does not talk much in public about religion, and Christian conservatives have been slow to embrace him. He turned some off by quickly denouncing two supporters, the Rev. John Hagee and the Rev. Rod Parsley, after controversial statements they made came to light.
While Mr. Obama opposes requiring religious tests for recipients of aid or use of federal money to proselytize, The Associated Press reported that he supports letting religious institutions -- in the non-federally funded parts of their activities -- hire and fire based on faith, according to a senior adviser to the campaign who the news agency said spoke on condition of anonymity.
While that notion appeared controversial, it seems to find support in a 2000 case involving the Boy Scouts of America. The Supreme Court ruled that the group, as a private organization, had a First Amendment right to set its membership rules.
A release by the Obama campaign on Tuesday said that most Americans favor allowing faith-based groups to seek government funding for social services. It did not note that its source for that statement, a 2005 poll by the Pew Forum, also found that many Americans ?find the practical implications of this idea troubling. In particular, the public expresses strong concerns about both the influence of government on particular religious organizations and the impact of religious groups on the people they are trying to help.?
Mr. Obama is building his appeal in part on calls to heal political rifts and address human suffering. He is also drawing on his own characteristics and story, including his embrace of Christianity as an adult, a facility with biblical language and imagery and comfort in talking about how his religious beliefs animate his approach to public life.
Joshua DuBois, director of religious affairs for the Obama campaign, said that the campaign expected resistance from a large part of the evangelical community, but that millions of faith voters were persuadable.
?We?re not going to convince everybody,? said Mr. DuBois, 25, a former associate pastor of a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church in Massachusetts. ?The most committed pro-lifers probably won?t vote for him. But others will be open to him because they see he?s a man of integrity, a person of faith who listens to and understands people of all religious backgrounds.?
But the subject of religion has become entangled in the false rumor that he is a Muslim. And it has been complicated by the effects of his association with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose brand of black liberation theology brought religion, race and patriotism into the campaign in ways not helpful to Mr. Obama. He also faces significant hurdles in appealing to religious voters because of his tolerance for abortion and same-sex marriage.
It also appears that Mr. Obama?s religious outreach efforts will be met by an increasingly intense reaction from the religious right.
James C. Dobson, one of the most prominent evangelical leaders on the right, accused Mr. Obama last week of employing a deviant reading of Scripture and a ?fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution? to justify his theology and world view.
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