Editor’s Note: this article originally appeared on Religion Unplugged and has been republished with permission.
By Chelsea Langston Bombino
On Feb. 14, President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order reestablishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships — an office largely ignored by the Trump administration — and announced Melissa Rogers as executive director. Rogers served the same role in the Obama administration.
The office was created by President George W. Bush two decades ago to improve communication with and ensure equal access to government funding by faith-based and secular civil society organizations helping local communities, in part to reduce the need for welfare spending.
The reestablishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships demonstrates the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to advancing collaboration with a diversity of organizations, both secular and faith-based. The office will be essential in coordinating and partnering with faith-based and place-based organizations to address the interconnected social challenges of this moment, including a global pandemic, systemic racism, poverty, and “profound polarization.”
The White House announced that this reinvigoration of the White House Partnerships initiative will:
include collaborating with civil society to: address the COVID-19 pandemic and boost economic recovery; combat systemic racism; increase opportunity and mobility for historically disadvantaged communities; and strengthen pluralism. The office will also support agency partnerships that advance the United States Government’s diplomatic, international development, and humanitarian work around the world. All of this work will be done in ways that respect cherished constitutional guarantees.
Moreover, President Biden stated:
I’m reestablishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to work with leaders of different faiths and backgrounds who are the frontlines of their communities in crisis and who can help us heal, unite, and rebuild. We still have many difficult nights to endure. But we will get through them together and with faith guiding us through the darkness and into the light.
The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood partnerships under Biden will prioritize the following social issues: addressing COVID-19 and catalyzing economic recovery, fighting systemic racism, expanding global development and humanitarian efforts, supporting equity and opportunity for historically marginalized communities, and reinforcing constitutional protections. The White House fact sheet stated: “A key commitment of the Partnerships Office is embracing pluralism.”
Biden Announces Partnerships Office Leadership
In addition to executive director of this office, Rogers will also serve as Senior Director for Faith and Public Policy in the White House Domestic Policy Council. She served as special assistant to President Obama and executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships from 2013-2017.
Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, Founder & Senior Director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, told Religion Unplugged:
Melissa Rogers is experienced in the partnership initiative and expert in the constitutional and legal issues. Of great importance to the success of the White House Office, she has a strong record of working with organizations and leaders on all sides of disputed church-state issues. It is great news that the Biden administration is continuing—with its own emphases, of course—the multiple-administration commitment of the federal government to strengthening and partnering with civil society organizations, both religious and secular. These organizations play such fundamental roles in our communities in responding to need and being channels of faith-full service. The new White House Office faces a challenging task of leadership in our time of heightened polarization, greater religious diversity and expanding secularism, and great controversy over how religious freedom will be protected as LGBTQ rights are extended.
In 2020, just before last November’s election, Rogers co-authored “A Time to Heal, A Time to Build” with E. J. Dionne. This significant report recommends the next administration to revive the faith-based initiative after its marginalization during the past four years. The report calls for a renewed White House partnership office situated in the Domestic Policy Council, rather than the public relations-oriented Office of Public Liaison, where it was under Trump. As I wrote recently, Rogers “is a mainstay, a principled moderate, a constant in the ever-evolving field of church-state policy. And, like Biden himself, her humble, low-profile consistency could resonate deeply with a President who took a similar approach to his own public servanthood.”
The White House also announced that Josh Dickson, who previously served as National Faith Engagement Director, will serve as the office’s Deputy Director. Dickson also served as the director of the Department of Commerce’s partnership office under President Obama. Dickson’s faith outreach campaign for Biden in the 2020 election brought together faith leaders of different theological traditions, races, ethnicities, and even ideological backgrounds.
Building on Two Decades of Bipartisan Partnership Principles
The White House’s announcement earlier this week continues the tradition of 20 years of bipartisan work in this area. Two decades ago, President George W. Bush launched an innovative new initiative and vital reorientation of government when he signed an executive order to found the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
According to Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, who served in this office in the Bush administration:
The new office was created to lead the federal government’s new commitment to more effectively ‘enlist, equip, enable, empower, and expand the work of faith-based and other community organizations’ to improve service to people in need. These organizations had long been trusted sources of assistance but were marginalized as the federal commitment to social welfare grew. Now, their role would be recognized and strengthened.
The Obama administration continued this bipartisan initiative, upholding the basic equal treatment principles of protecting the freedom of both faith-based and secular organizations to maintain their distinctive identities while competing for government funding. The Obama administration also brought some significant innovations to the initiative. President Obama renamed this office the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and started a new Advisory Council, composed of diverse faith-based and secular leaders, including individuals who differed with the Obama administration on certain social and policy issues.
While the Obama administration took actions that some theologically orthodox religious organizations found burdensome to their religious freedom, such as advancing birth control access and LGBT civil right protections, the Obama administration also made important improvements to the faith-based initiative.
The Trump administration never formally reestablished the White House Office. Rather, Trump renamed the initiative the Faith and Opportunity Initiative, appointed a faith-based “Advisor,” and generally surrounded himself with spiritual leaders composed predominantly of White evangelicals from his base. The Trump administration pioneered a few positive changes but overall, failed to offer a robust reinvigoration of the White House faith-based initiative at the scale of his predecessors, and his administration additionally weakened religious freedom protections for social service recipients by taking away the referral requirement.
Faith-Based and Place-Based Partnerships Moving Forward
Religious and social conservatives have wondered to what extent the Biden administration would protect the religious freedom of faith-based organizations with theologically orthodox beliefs on sexual ethics, family structure, and abortion. Many of these questions remain to be answered, yet the Biden administration’s prioritization of reinvigorating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships so early in his first 100 days shows promise. Also promising is Biden’s appointment of Rogers to lead the Partnerships Office, who has shown her commitment to protecting two decades of a consensus legal framework protecting the religious freedom of both social services providers and beneficiaries.
Although vague, the White House offered hopeful language for continued partnerships with organizations of all faiths and none. It stated:
The Partnerships Office, for example, will not prefer one faith over another or favor religious over secular organizations. Instead, it will work with every willing partner to promote the common good, including those who have differences with the Administration. As President Biden has repeatedly said, he will be president for all Americans.
Chelsea Langston Bombino is a believer in sacred communities, a wife, and a mother. She serves as a program officer with the Fetzer Institute and a fellow with the Center for Public Justice.
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