Friday, December 5, 2008 4:30 PM

'Retain But Reform' Faith-Based Initiatives, Brookings Recommends

By MARY GILBERT

The Bush administration drew a lot of attention -- both positive and negative -- to the issue of government partnerships with religious organizations by creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which Barack Obama has pledged to maintain.

A new Brookings Institution policy paper offers a list of 16 recommendations for the Obama administration on how to improve the relationship between government and religious groups in order to provide better assistance to Americans in need.

While this is an area that inspires passionate disagreement, Brookings senior fellow William Galston is optimistic that Obama's appeals to bipartisanship and religious tolerance can bring a measure of common sense to the debate. "This would be the perfect place" for Obama "to begin redeeming his promise of changing the tone of politics," Galston said at a press conference this morning.

The authors of the paper, Washington Post columnist and Brookings senior fellow E.J. Dionne Jr. and Wake Forest Divinity School's Melissa Rogers, insist that the Obama administration should maintain a working partnership between the government and faith-based organizations and take steps to increase funding to successful programs.

That said, Rogers and Dionne believe that President Bush's approach to faith-based initiatives "raised genuinely serious constitutional issues" by pushing the boundaries of church-state separation, and they recommend that Obama conduct a "systematic study of the general practice of contracting out public service" to allay such concerns. For example, organizations are currently prohibited from using public funds for "inherently religious" activities, but this standard is vague and should be fleshed out, the authors say.

The Bush team's efforts on faith-based initiatives have been governed largely through executive orders rather than legislation. Dionne and Rogers argue that Obama should begin any process of reform to the White House office by amending those executive orders, but that he should also initiate a comprehensive "consensus process that would lead to a more durable policy regime" in which Congress can play a role. "We believe everyone would benefit if government partnerships with religious and other social service providers were regulated through a relatively stable, long-term regime," rather than shifting with each new administration, Dionne and Rogers write.

The complete paper can be found here.