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Obama
Courts Conservatives with
New Faith Program
(Video)
 (AP) - Taking a page from
President
Bush, Democrat Barack Obama said Tuesday he wants to expand White House
efforts to steer social service dollars to religious groups, risking
protests in his own party with his latest aggressive reach for voters
who usually vote Republican.
Obama
contended he is merely stating long-held positions —
surprising to some, he said, after a primary campaign in which he was
"tagged as being on the left."
In recent days, with the Democratic nomination in hand and the general
election battle with Republican John McCain ahead, Obama has been
sounding centrist themes with comments on guns, government surveillance
and capital punishment. He's even quoted Ronald Reagan.
On Tuesday, touring Presbyterian Church-based social services facility,
the Democratic senator said he would get religious charities more
involved in government anti-poverty efforts if elected.
"We need an all-hands-on-deck approach," he said at Eastside Community
Ministry.
The event was part of a series leading into Friday's Fourth of July
holiday aimed at reassuring skeptical voters and shifting away from
being stamped as part of the Democratic Party's most liberal wing.
He said the connection of religion and public service was nothing new
in his personal life.
Obama showed he was comfortable using the kind of language that is
familiar in evangelical churches and Bible studies by calling his faith
"a personal commitment to Christ." He said that his time as a community
organizer in decimated Chicago neighborhoods, supported in part by a
Catholic group, brought him to a deeper faith and also convinced him
that faith is useless without works.
"While I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn't be
fulfilling God's will unless I went out and did the Lord's work," he
declared.
His talk on faith in the battleground state of Ohio came a day after a
speech on patriotism in Missouri, another November election
battleground. Wednesday, he travels to Colorado Springs, Colo., a hub
of conservative Christian organizations, for a speech focused on
service.
With 80 percent of Americans saying they identify themselves with some
religion, Obama's campaign has struggled with the topic.
Comments critical of America by Obama's longtime pastor, the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright, caused a firestorm during the primaries and brought
Obama's brand of faith under scrutiny because of Wright's adherence to
black liberation theology. Obama also has battled false but persistent
rumors that he is a Muslim; they have been kept alive on the Internet
despite his repeated talk about his longtime devotion to Christianity.
Conservative Christians make up about a quarter of the electorate, and
they helped put Bush in office twice. Many still are likely to oppose
the Democratic nominee because of his support for abortion rights, gay
rights and other issues.
An AP-Yahoo News poll in June found that people who attend church at
least once a week support Republican McCain over Obama, 49 percent to
37 percent. Those who attend church less often tend to favor Obama.
White evangelical Christians who attend church weekly favor McCain by
huge margins.
Still, the Obama camp notes that some evangelicals feel passionately
about aggressive environmental stewardship, an issue more commonly
associated with Democrats. Others find appeal in Obama's message about
ending messy political divisions.
Obama recently won the endorsement of the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell,
leader of a Methodist megachurch in Houston who is very close to Bush.
McCain is a mostly reliable conservative vote, but he isn't as
passionate or vocal about religious conservatives as some would like.
He also famously upbraided some Christian evangelical leaders as
"agents of intolerance" in his first presidential campaign. He has
sought to make amends since then and is continuing his outreach
efforts. He met with world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham last
weekend.
Obama's high-profile embrace of a key theme of Bush's time in office
— the "faith-based initiative" — is just the latest
example of him trying to show his centrist side.
Last week, he quoted Reagan, saying "we have to trust but verify" after
Bush lifted trade sanctions against North Korea and moved to remove the
country from the U.S. terrorism list.
Obama also supported new electronic surveillance rules for the
government's eavesdropping program, saying "an important tool in the
fight against terrorism will continue," after opposing a similar bill
last year. After the Supreme Court overturned the District of
Columbia's gun ban, he said he favors both an individual's right to
bear firearms as well as a government's right to regulate them.
On Iraq, he has gone from hard-edged, vocal opposition to more nuanced
rhetoric that calls for a phased-out troop drawdown that could last 16
months. He also disagreed with the Supreme Court decision last week
that struck down a Louisiana law allowing capital punishment for people
who rape children under 12.
Speaking with reporters, Obama disputed that he is altering views.
"I get tagged as being on the left and, when I simply describe what has
been my position consistently, then suddenly people act surprised," he
said. "But there hasn't been substantial shifts there."
While Obama would expand Bush's efforts to give religious charities
more equal footing when getting federal funding, he also would tweak
what he would call the President's Council for Faith-Based and
Neighborhood Partnerships in ways that divert from Bush's approach.
He would increase spending on social services, starting with a $500
million-a-year program to keep 1 million poor children up to speed on
their studies over the summers. He would increase training for
charities applying for funding and make it a grass-roots effort. He
would elevate the program to be "a critical part of my administration,"
a reference to criticism that Bush paid barely more than lip service to
his effort.
Obama also chose a different emphasis for why religious charities are
an important answer to solving poverty and other social problems:
because they better know the people who are hurting, instead of Bush's
argument that religion itself is a transforming power the government
must not be afraid to harness.
And while Bush supports allowing all religious groups to make any
employment decisions based on faith, Obama proposes allowing religious
institutions to hire and fire based on religion only in the
non-taxpayer-funded portions of their activities — consistent
with current federal, state and local laws. "That makes perfect sense,"
he said.
Where there are state or local laws prohibiting hiring choices based on
sexual orientation in the federally funded portion of the programs, he
said he would support those being applied.
This position would make his proposal "dead on arrival" for many
evangelicals and small churches, said Jim Towey, a former head of
Bush's faith-based office. That's because telling a small organization
to keep employees hired with federal funds separate from others "is
unmanageable — and besides those folks want to hire people
who share their vision and mission," Towey said.
Even as Obama courts the right, his support for a signature Bush
program could invite protest from others.
"This initiative has been a failure on all counts, and it ought to be
shut down, not expanded," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive
director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
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