The Revealer, a daily review of religion and the press, posts a summary of where each candidate stands on faith-based initiatives. They ask:
Will the uneasy merger of church and state known as faith-based initiatives survive into the next administration? A Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life examination of the candidates says yes. Every major candidate is in favor of some version of the program.
Here is a summary of each candidate’s position on Faith Based Initiatives. The positions range from whole-hearted support to support with reservations about constitutional questions and equal employment opportunities.
The Revealer also links an article by The Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy concerning the durability of the Faith-based Initiative.
As it approaches its seventh anniversary, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has put in place a series of administrative and structural changes that could have implications beyond the end of the Bush administration.
The big question is just how significant – or how permanent – the effort to encourage grassroots religious groups to provide more social services will be. The answer may depend, in part, on the ability of the Initiative’s promoters to cement the effort’s philosophy and practices in this final year of President Bush’s term, observers say.
Some close watchers of the Initiative detect a steady decrease in the effort’s visibility over the last several years, particularly from the White House itself. Others, however, see the past year as a time of expanded presence for the effort at the level of federal agencies, as well as with state and local government officials, with proponents emboldened by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in their favor and an affable White House faith-based director who has both a strong sense of conviction and a solid strategy.
Read all here.
One of the early partners in Faith-based work was Episcopal Migration Ministries.