President Barack Obama, signaling early in his administration that religion belongs in the U.S. public discourse, has promised to open a big tent to voices from across the spectrum of belief without crossing boundaries separating church and state.
The Democrat’s inaugural pomp was steeped in prayer, and one of his first proclamations referred to "an awesome God.” Last week at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, Obama unveiled a new-look White House Office on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that features a team of policy advisers from both religious and secular social service circles. Most are ideological allies, but not all.
The question is whether such moves will amount to symbolic window dressing or progress in finding common ground on moral issues without stepping on traditional culture-war land mines.
Obama’s retooling of the faith-based office, plagued in the Bush years by accusations that it was underfunded and too political, upset some Obama supporters who hoped it would go away.
Its executive director is Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old former Pentecostal pastor who headed religious outreach for Obama’s Senate office and his presidential campaign.
The board also includes an openly gay man, Fred Davie, president of a New York-based secular nonprofit called Public/Private Ventures. Davie’s appointment came after gay rights groups expressed outrage over Obama’s choice to deliver the inaugural invocation: influential evangelical pastor Rick Warren, who supported a November ballot measure that overturned gay marriage in California.
While Obama has made clear he feels that religion deserves a place in policy-making, he also has shown a tendency to paint those who disagree with him on moral issues as divisive, George said.
Several battles with religious story lines loom ahead. Obama has signaled he would overturn Bush prohibitions on embryonic stem cell research, and Supreme Court vacancies are also possible.
James Dunn, former head of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which advocates church-state separation, said Obama is striving for an elusive middle ground as his presidency begins.
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