President Barack Obama wants to move beyond recurring debates about the role of government and faith-based groups working cooperatively, according to the White House official charged with addressing issues of faith and public life.
“In the past there have been many debates about whether we should be engaging faith-based groups because they might be more effective at some issues or secular groups are more effective at others,” said Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Joshua DuBois. “This President thinks that those debates, quite frankly, are wasting a lot of time.”
DuBois, 27, appeared with Dean Samuel Lloyd of the Washington National Cathedral as part of the Episcopal Cathedral’s weekly Sunday Forum speaker series.
“We have some significant challenges we’re facing as a country,” DuBois said, citing the problem of high school dropouts and hunger. “We need all hands on deck to address those challenges, and we don’t have time to get into these arguments about whether religious organizations are more effective than secular groups, or vice versa.”
DuBois did qualify the statement, however.
“When you bring in that aspect of federal funding, there are some very real rules there. You can’t proselytize using federal funds; you have to keep the funds separate.”
An ordained Pentecostal minister, DuBois grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, the step-son of an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) pastor. At Boston University, DuBois joined the leadership of a non-denominational church in Boston that eventually affiliated itself with a Pentecostal denomination.
Before coming to the White House, DuBois ran the religious outreach program for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. He was dubbed Obama’s “Pastor-in-Chief” by Time Magazine and the Boston Globe named him “The President’s Man of Faith”.
The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is tasked with bringing religious and non-religious groups together to address an array of social and economic problems. DuBois also coordinates the President’s Advisory Panel, a group of 25 religious and secular leaders who lend their expertise to issues such as community building, family health, economic recovery and interfaith dialogue.
The White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships manage 12 faith-based offices across government agencies. DuBois describes the previous office as financially centered.
“They were established to remove the hurdles and allow those groups to compete effectively for federal funds,” DuBois explained. “The President has asked my office to expand that and really look at the non-financial ways, the civic partnerships between government and local groups.”
DuBois mentioned information sharing, and bringing groups together to benefit from economies of scale as part of the President’s new, civic vision of the office.
The Pentecostal minister highlighted three areas that the office plans to focus its energy, beginning with a national conversation on responsible fatherhood and healthy families.
“There are some real challenges related to father absence in this country, and, candidly, particularly in the African American community where the rates of father absence and lack of involvement are much higher than in some other demographics,” DuBois said. “We want to think about how we can all work together – the government, individuals, community organizations, to really have an impact on that challenge.”
DuBois also said that the Faith-based office is working in conjunction with the White House Council on Women and Girls and the Domestic Policy Council (which DuBois is also a part of) to find common ground on the issue of what he referred to as “reproductive health.”
“Now, no one is going to agree on the fundamental questions that are out there around abortion, and we’re not seeking to navigate those fundamental differences,” DuBois explained. “But we want to find out if there are areas in the middle that we can agree – like supporting pregnant women, strengthening our adoption system and so forth.”
Lastly, DuBois noted that the office is tasked with focusing on interfaith dialogue and cooperation, saying that Obama wants to use the various mechanisms of the Federal government, as well as his own bully pulpit, to bring people from different religious backgrounds together.
The White House official said that increased interfaith cooperation was possible, especially when the focus was moved from common dialogue to common service. As DuBois put it, “less debates on theology, more on coming together to feed the hungry.”
“My hope is rooted, one, in this President, who I think has a wonderful vision for how we can bring together faith in our public life and polity in a way that is respectful and focused on a common good,” DuBois said. “But also, [it is] in the people I am meeting who want to serve their communities, love their families and be good citizens and be true to their own God and so I am hopeful.”
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