Faith-Based Advisers: We Found 'Meaningful Common Ground'

WASHINGTON – We have different opinions, admitted the White House's faith-based advisers on Tuesday when they presented their recommendations. But we were able to find “meaningful common ground,” they added.

After a year of work, the 25 members of the first Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships presented a report that included more than 60 recommendations for six issues - economic recovery and domestic poverty, fatherhood and healthy families, environment and climate change, inter-religious cooperation, global poverty and development, and reform of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The proposals provide suggestions on how the government can better work with faith-based and community groups to tackle major social issues.

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“We are a diverse group,” stated Melissa Rogers, chair of the council, at the onset of the event for the report's release. “We differ on matters of faith. We differ in our political perspectives and our philosophical approach. We differ in matter of theology even within our particular faith traditions.”

Yet despite their diverse and strong opinions, she said, the advisers “really listened” to one another and found “meaningful common ground” that went beyond the “lowest common denominator.”

Rogers’ sentiments were echoed by Pastor Joel C. Hunter, an adviser on the taskforce for inter-religious cooperation.

Hunter, who sits on the board of directors for the World Evangelical Alliance and the National Association of Evangelicals, told The Christian Post frankly that he is not usually attracted to such interfaith dialogues.

“I’m a conservative evangelical,” Hunter stated matter-of-factly. “I kind of always shied away from general ecumenical, let’s-all-just-be-nice-to-one-another, kumbaya stuff. Well, that’s not this. This is [about] 'How do we maintain our distinctions, make them even more clear, but at the same time cooperate in a way that makes the world safer?'”

The Florida megachurch pastor said these types of conversations are essential to national security because they marginalize the violent extremists among the people of America and give people who want to be fully engaged in their faith an alternative.

Throughout the event, high-level members of the Obama administration joined the panel for the presentation related to their department. The officials listened to the report and then gave feedback on recommendations and how they plan to use the report.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius joined for the report on the economic recovery and domestic poverty recommendations. In her response, she shared about how schools serve as feeding sites for needy children during the school year. But a current problem the country is facing is how to provide meals for the children during the summer. Sebelius said she would like to work with churches and other community organizations to make sure children have somewhere they can receive meals during the summer.

“It (the report of recommendations) won’t just be a document on a shelf,” said Sebelius. “I promise you this document will become an active action plan in the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Though the report, in general, has escaped any big controversy, there have been questions on why the council did not address the hot-button issue of abortion reduction, which President Obama last year said he would like the advisers to work on.

Joshua DuBois, the director of the office, said the council members have been involved in conversations about abortion reduction but did not create a task force for the issue because the president would like to extend the discussion to include the Domestic Policy Council.

Still, pro-life groups such as Focus on the Family say they are disappointed that the council did not present a plan to reduce abortions.

“The president said he wanted to reduce the need for abortions,” said Ashley Horne, federal issues analyst with Focus on the Family Action. “So, that topic would have been a natural fit for this group.”

“It’s one more strike against a president who, so far, has catered only to the pro-abortion agenda.”

Besides the abortion issue, the report has also been criticized for not including religious language. Council member Dr. Frank Page, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he appreciated the work of the advisers but he wished the report expressed the motivation behind why faith leaders care about the issues.

Nevertheless, DuBois said that he is proud of the work the office and its first advisory council has done in the first year. The office under President Obama went directly to faith leaders and community leaders, through the council, and sought their advice on how best to partner, he said.

“The previous initiative largely had a dollar-and-cents vision of their office which caused a lot of controversy,” DuBois said to The Christian Post. “We’re seeking to communicate that when we partner with faith-based groups, it doesn’t have to be about finance. It could be about sharing information with them, about building their capacity, serving as a convener, and we think that will slowly but surely help turn this initiative around.”

The new faith-based advisory council will be installed sometime this spring or summer. Advisers serve one-year terms.

Some of the recommendations made by the council include:

• Utilization of the knowledge, expertise, and on-the-ground experience of local faith- and community-based organizations to redefine the federal poverty guideline so that it more accurately measures and responds to the needs of low-income people

• Support of faith-and community-based partnerships as a means to fill the gaps in providing essential services like transportation, housing, food assistance, job training, education, and healthcare for low-income families and individuals

• Hosting of an annual Father’s Day Celebration at the White House to honor exemplary fathers and to highlight advances in father involvement resulting from the government’s interdepartmental working groups and the strategic partnerships formed at the quarterly roundtables

• Formation of an Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Environmental Protection Agency and assignment of faith- and community-based liaisons to EPA regional offices

• More partnerships with interreligious councils and women of faith networks to advance peace building and development

• Placement of Faith-Based and Civil Society Engagement Officers in USAID missions

• Reduction of barriers to obtaining 501(c)(3) recognition

Michelle A. Vu
Christian Post Reporter

FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100310/faith-based-advisers-we-found-meaningful-common-ground/

Learning From the Sin of Sodom

Dear Friends,

There is a great article in today's New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, who has written about what a huge mistake it would be not to channel government money through faith-based organizations for international aid. Read below or at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28kristof.html.

Blessings, Pastor Joel

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Learning From the Sin of Sodom

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

For most of the last century, save-the-worlders were primarily Democrats and liberals. In contrast, many Republicans and religious conservatives denounced government aid programs, with Senator Jesse Helms calling them “money down a rat hole.”

Over the last decade, however, that divide has dissolved, in ways that many Americans haven’t noticed or appreciated. Evangelicals have become the new internationalists, pushing successfully for new American programs against AIDS and malaria, and doing superb work on issues from human trafficking in India to mass rape in Congo.

A pop quiz: What’s the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization?

It’s not Save the Children, and it’s not CARE — both terrific secular organizations. Rather, it’s World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian organization (with strong evangelical roots) whose budget has roughly tripled over the last decade.

World Vision now has 40,000 staff members in nearly 100 countries. That’s more staff members than CARE, Save the Children and the worldwide operations of the United States Agency for International Development — combined.

A growing number of conservative Christians are explicitly and self-critically acknowledging that to be “pro-life” must mean more than opposing abortion. The head of World Vision in the United States, Richard Stearns, begins his fascinating book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” with an account of a visit a decade ago to Uganda, where he met a 13-year-old AIDS orphan who was raising his younger brothers by himself.

“What sickened me most was this question: where was the Church?” he writes. “Where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time? Surely the Church should have been caring for these ‘orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27). Shouldn’t the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion?

“How have we missed it so tragically, when even rock stars and Hollywood actors seem to understand?”

Mr. Stearns argues that evangelicals were often so focused on sexual morality and a personal relationship with God that they ignored the needy. He writes laceratingly about “a Church that had the wealth to build great sanctuaries but lacked the will to build schools, hospitals, and clinics.”

In one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49.)

Hmm. Imagine if sodomy laws could be used to punish the stingy, unconcerned rich!

The American view of evangelicals is still shaped by preening television blowhards and hypocrites who seem obsessed with gays and fetuses. One study cited in the book found that even among churchgoers ages 16 to 29, the descriptions most associated with Christianity were “antihomosexual,” “judgmental,” “too involved in politics,” and “hypocritical.”

Some conservative Christians reinforced the worst view of themselves by inspiring Ugandan homophobes who backed a bill that would punish gays with life imprisonment or execution. Ditto for the Vatican, whose hostility to condoms contributes to the AIDS epidemic. But there’s more to the picture: I’ve also seen many Catholic nuns and priests heroically caring for AIDS patients — even quietly handing out condoms.

One of the most inspiring figures I’ve met while covering Congo’s brutal civil war is a determined Polish nun in the terrifying hinterland, feeding orphans, standing up to drunken soldiers and comforting survivors — all in a war zone. I came back and decided: I want to grow up and become a Polish nun.

Some Americans assume that religious groups offer aid to entice converts. That’s incorrect. Today, groups like World Vision ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversation.

Some liberals are pushing to end the longtime practice (it’s a myth that this started with President George W. Bush) of channeling American aid through faith-based organizations. That change would be a catastrophe. In Haiti, more than half of food distributions go through religious groups like World Vision that have indispensable networks on the ground. We mustn’t make Haitians the casualties in our cultural wars.

A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.

If secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress against common enemies of humanity, like illiteracy, human trafficking and maternal mortality.

WASHINGTON POST: Obama task force: Consult religious groups more on foreign policy

Among the major recommendations of the task force on inter-religious cooperation is to involve religious communities more in the making of American foreign policy. According to Dalia Mogahed, an advisory board member who is on that task force and also runs Gallup's Center for Muslim Studies, that means both religious leaders abroad and domestic ones. This theme was also sounded earlier in the week by a group of mostly faith leaders called the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the idea being that U.S. foreign policy is governed without enough understanding of religion.

I asked Joel Hunter, an evangelical mega-church pastor from Florida who also sat on the group, what's new about this philosophy (of pushing for more interfaith work)? How will the average American notice anything different from the pro-interfaith vibe that's been lauded and talked about by religious and political leaders for years and years?

Hunter said the difference is that, for decades, "interfaith" was viewed as a liberal idea, largely consisting of (in the minds of skeptics) sitting around talking about your faith and papering over the profound differences between competing truth claims.

Today's interfaith, Hunter said, doesn't seek those interactions, but rather finding shared goals dissimilar faith communities can collaborate on, such as decreasing poverty or boosting health care. More socially conservative types - Hunter was nominated in 2006 to be head of the Christian Coalition, though he wound up stepping down - can and do embrace this vision, he said.

"I don't want to get into a lot of homogeneity," he said Friday.

Among the most significant recommendations of the task force focused on economic recovery, according to National Council of Churches President Peg Chemberlin, who sat on that group, is its urging of the White House to redefine the guidelines used to measure poverty. The current measure, she said, is too reliant on the cost of food, which Chemberlin said has become less accurate.

BY MICHELLE BOORSTEIN. READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE.

BOSTON GLOBE: Pastor Joel C. Hunter Comments on President Obama's Spiritual Life

WASHINGTON - He named a best-selling book after a pastor’s sermon and was outspoken as a candidate about the value of faith in public life. He infused stump speeches with phrases like “I am my brother’s keeper,’’ and made his journey to Christianity a central theme of the life story he shared with voters.

But since President Obama took office a year ago, his faith has largely receded from public view. He has attended church in the capital only four times, and worshiped half a dozen times at a secluded Camp David chapel. He prays privately, reads a “daily devotional’’ that aides send to his BlackBerry, and talks to pastors by phone, but seldom frames policies in spiritual terms.

The greater privacy reflects not a slackening of devotion, but a desire to shield his spirituality from the maw of politics and strike an inclusive tone at a time of competing national priorities and continuing partisan division, according to people close to the White House on faith issues.

“There are several ways that he is continuing to grow in his faith, all of them - or practically of all them - he’s trying to keep as private and personal as possible so they will not be politicized,’’ said Pastor Joel C. Hunter, who is part of an inner circle of pastors the president consults by phone for spiritual guidance.

But the shift has drawn notice from some religious leaders and political analysts, who say it opens Obama to questions of sincerity and threatens his support among the religious voters his campaign helped peel away from the Republican Party.

“You can’t be using the church just to get elected and then push the church to the side,’’ said the Rev. Wilfredo De Jesus, a prominent Chicago pastor who had campaigned for Obama among Hispanic evangelicals, many of whom had voted in earlier elections for George W. Bush. “If the president says he’s Christian, then in his narrative, and in his speeches and in his life, that should be displayed.’’

The first family’s intensive, early search for a church in Washington appears to have lost steam amid concerns about the disruption security arrangements would cause local worshipers. And since breaking with his Chicago church and longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, nearly two years ago, Obama has not openly aligned with any one denomination or spiritual adviser.

A poll last August by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life indicated that the proportion of Americans who saw the Democratic Party as friendly to religion had dropped to Bush-era levels, at 29 percent, after peaking at 38 percent at the height of the Obama campaign a year earlier.

Joshua DuBois, director of the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, said he believes Obama “wants to make sure that there is something about his daily religious practice that is separate from the news cycle.’’

“He’ll talk about his Christian faith when it feels right and appropriate, and other times he’s just going to practice his Christian faith through the way he lives his life,’’ said DuBois, a Pentecostal pastor who was Obama’s campaign liaison to faith groups. “It’s not about a political strategy or a communication strategy. It’s about him walking the walk, which is always more valuable than just talking the talk.’’

Said Hunter, the senior pastor of an Evangelical megachurch in Longwood, Fla.: “When you’re on the campaign trail . . . that faith component is very important to people in trying to get a sense of your identity. When you become president, pretty suddenly you’re the president of all the people.’’

Hunter also said that during phone calls with the president, Obama’s spiritual questions are more often personal than political, though Hunter declined to share specifics.

Analysts say that another reason for Obama’s reticence may be the sheer number of crises in his first year in office and that a sharper public focus on faith risks becoming a divisive distraction.

Obama’s choice of evangelical Pastor Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, for instance, inflamed gay-rights supporters, while Obama’s commencement address in May at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic institution, where he called for “open minds’’ on the abortion debate, angered some Catholics and religious conservatives.

“We have a recession, we have the health care agenda - Obama has taken on so much, why add one more thing, especially one that you can’t legislate on?’’ said Professor Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.

On the campaign trail, Obama saw a discussion of faith as a means to unite Americans of all creeds - nonbelievers included - around a common set of values: a “politics of conscience,’’ as he put it.

But that has been a tougher sell as president. The nitty-gritty of policy has tended to highlight divisions not just between religious and secular voters but also among religious groups. Earlier this month, some two dozen groups ranging from the NAACP to the United Sikhs and the American Jewish Committee signed a letter expressing disappointment that Obama had yet to dismantle fully Bush-era rules permitting faith-based hiring by recipients of some federal funds.

Obama underscored his faith the moment he entered the national stage, declaring in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston that “We worship an awesome God in the blue states.’’ His Kenyan father had been raised Muslim but was an atheist by the time Obama was born. His mother, whose ancestors were Methodist and Baptist, was nonpracticing.

While organizing the poor on Chicago’s South Side not long after college, Obama met Wright, began attending Trinity United Church of Christ, and found God, he has said. He named his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,’’ after a sermon by Wright. And he warned Democrats against letting the evangelical right “hijack’’ religion for political ends.

As early as 2007, one poll indicated, Obama was seen as “strongly religious’’ by more voters than every presidential candidate except Republican Mitt Romney, whose Mormonism was the subject of intense news coverage.

Obama’s courtship of religious groups in the 2008 race - the most extensive ever by a Democratic candidate for president - paid off on Election Day with strong support among liberal and moderate religious voters. He won 54 percent of the Catholic vote, a stark reversal from four years earlier, when Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, himself Catholic, lost the same group to Bush.

But a central figure in Obama’s faith journey - the Rev. Wright - nearly derailed his candidacy, when videos surfaced of some of the pastor's controversial sermons. "That was deeply disturbing to us," Obama told a group of Catholic reporters last summer. "It made us very sensitive to the fact that as President the church we attend can end up being interpreted as speaking for us at all times."

Several pastors who support Obama said church membership would send an important signal about the depth of his conviction.

“It’s only by being part of a church community that he’s going to get his own faith grounded,’’ said Bruce Wall, pastor of Global Ministries Christian Church, in Dorchester . “George Bush did not hide his faith. He was a man of prayer, whether you supported him or not.’’

Other pastors said they see religious values behind the president’s policies, even if Obama was less voluble than he was before the election.

“When you’re talking about universal health care policy, you’re talking about helping, ‘the least of these,’ ’’ said the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, a retired pastor who is executive director of the Boston TenPoint Coalition, a community organization serving black and Latino youth. “When you talk about building a coalition around the world to fight terrorism, you’re talking about being your brother’s keeper.’’

In a speech last month in honor of Martin Luther King Day, Obama offered a rare recent glimpse of the role of faith in his life today.

“You know, folks ask me sometimes why I look so calm,’’ he said at a Washington church. “And I have a confession to make here. There are times when I’m not so calm. . . . There are times when progress seems too slow. There are times when the words that are spoken about me hurt. . . . But let me tell you - during those times it’s faith that keeps me calm. It’s faith that gives me peace.’’

U.S. Islamic Forum Raises Hope for the Future

This year’s U.S.-Islamic World Forum, held Feb. 13-15 in Doha, Qatar, comes at sensitive time in U.S.-Muslim relations.

In a report for Religion News Service (RNS), journalist Omar Sacirbey wrote: “Following the attempted Christmas Day airliner bombing and other recent terror-related arrests, many Americans are increasingly worried about terrorism, and critics are accusing President Obama of being soft on Muslim extremists.”

He added that in the Muslim world, “many people are angry about the war in Afghanistan, U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, their own economic problems, and expect [President] Obama to deliver remedies faster than his administration may be able to.”

Now in its seventh year, the Forum has become the foremost meeting for positive cross-cultural engagement among leaders from the United States and the Muslim world—bringing together key leaders in the fields of politics, business, media, academia and civil society. It seeks to address the critical issues dividing the United States and the Muslim world by providing a unique platform for frank dialogue, learning and the development of positive partnerships between key leaders and opinion shapers from both sides.

American religious figures who attended this year’s conference said the sensitive state of U.S.-Islamic relations requires increased religious involvement in diplomacy.

Episcopal Bishop John Chane of Washington D.C., who has attended two previous forums, said: “When you have 1.5 billion Muslims, 2 billion Christians, and 13 million Jews, from an Abrahamic perspective, you have a lot of influence. Twentieth-century diplomacy has failed so far, and we have to recognize that you need religion in the mix.”

Dr. Joel C. Hunter, who has attended three forums, agreed: “In the Muslim world ... their faith is a very integral part of their foreign policy. They want to hear secular and religious ideas.”

Despite current tensions, observers say U.S.-Islamic relations are improving under President Obama.

“A lot of the Islamic world is more anxious to engage because we have a president who wants to restart relations with Muslims,” Dr. Hunter explained. “We’ve gone from a defensive mode to a development and diplomatic mode.”

Al-Husein Madhany, a Muslim-American scholar and technology activist who convened a conference workshop on how to use new media to build grassroots organizations and civic institutions, added: “We have a moment in history where there’s been a promise made by the leader of the free world for a new beginning. There’s an excitement in people’s voices about America that I didn’t hear during the previous administration.”

Come Let Us Reason Together: A Guide for Busy Pastors

In early 2007, the Come Let Us Reason Together initiative was launched. It was an undertaking that few thought could be successful: finding common ground between centrist evangelicals and progressives on the most divisive cultural issues of our times. The heart of Come Let Us Reason Together is a Governing Agenda, released in January 2009. It represents the fruit of these labors and maps a joint path forward to heal a nation torn apart by the culture wars.

The most recent product of the Come Let Us Reason Together initiative is Come Let Us Reason Together: A Guide for Busy Pastors (developed with assistance from Pastor Hunter and other leaders). This user-friendly guide describes how pastors can embody this approach at the local church level and join a growing chorus of Christian leaders who are committed to finding a path beyond the culture wars to common ground.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict Resolution from Northland Church on Vimeo.

God takes great delight in giving us relationships with people who are very different than we are. This is not for competition, but for completion. This is true in families, in friendships ... and in resolving America's culture war.

NAE: For the Health of the Nation

Dr. Hunter is on the Board of Directors (and Northland is a member) of the National Association of Evangelicals. With a membership of 30 million, it is the most influential evangelical voice in the United States of America. You can visit the Public Affairs page of the NAE website and read “For the Health of the Nation,” our signature statement on participation in the public square.

http://www.nae.net/government-affairs

USA Today: Activists who redefine "evangelical" call for Haiti debt relief

The crisis of biblical proportions in Haiti has brought out the full spectrum of the faithful to offer emergency aid. Now, a start-up group of progressive Protestants is launching itself with a campaign to erase Haiti's debts so the crippled nation can focus on rebuilding.

The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good -- led by marquee activists, academics, seminar profs and pastors such as Rev. Richard Cizik -- was originally going to launch later this month but stepped up to the publicity megaphone to call attention to Haiti's need beyond emergency relief. Their release says, "We believe that Jesus calls us to work together to set free those who are held captive by debt."

You remember Cizik from headlines in 2008, when the long-time head of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals resigned under fire for hinting support for gay unions in a radio interview.

Evidently, Jesus doesn't call people who disagree about the Bible to work together on issues. Cizik's outspoken concern for global climate change issues had already made him a target with big name conservatives such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. But, in recent years, the e-word (evangelical) banner, once owned by Christians with conservative views on politics, economics and biblical morality, has become a flag flown by any Protestant with a social justice focus and a contemporary focus on the Gospel.

Partnership executive director Rev. Steven Martin, formerly with Partnership co-founder David Gushee's group, Evangelicals for Human Rights, says they didn't want to wait to campaign for debt forgiveness. Although two thirds of Haiti's debt, held by other governments and major institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, has been forgiven already, the remaining billions could cost Haiti as much as $50 million a year to service. That's money Haiti needs for rebuilding, says Martin.

Their release quotes Gushee calling the Partnership, "a new way to bear witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ. We have yearned to offer a better model for how Christians address public issues; to be known for always standing up for those whom God loves but the world or the church often mistreat or neglect."

Don't look for Dobson or any other megawatt megachurch conservatives (with the exception of Rev. Joel Hunter, of Northland Church in Orlando, who also serves on President Obama's Council for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships) on the list of signators.

The Partnership's website's includes its stands -- often written with highly nuanced phrasing -- on hot issues such reproductive rights, gay marriage and environmentalism. For example:

We stand against the collapse of marriage and for stronger family life. We are involved in efforts to strengthen the fading institution of marriage and thereby protecting and enhancing the well-being of children. We do not believe that denigrating the dignity and denying the human rights of gays and lesbians is a legitimate part of a "pro-family" Christian agenda, and will work to reform Christian attitudes and treatment of lesbian and gay people.

This time, no one's going to shove Cizik out the door for saying so.

Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/topics/post/Events+and+Awards/In-depth+Coverage/Haiti+Earthquake/16364.blog/1

Prayer Vigil for Haiti

Haiti Without Borders Prayer Vigil from Northland Church on Vimeo.

Pastor Hunter joins with Haitian pastors at a prayer vigil in Crane's Roost Park in Florida, on January 27, 2010.