Amid Daniels news, Trump announces faith-based initiative
WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump announced an executive order he said would expand government grants to and partnerships with faith-based groups in a Rose Garden ceremony Thursday.
A top faith advisor to Trump said the aim was a culture change producing less conversations about churchstate barriers “without all of these arbitrary concerns as to what is appropriate.”
Trump has shrunk the infrastructure built by presidents Bush and Obama, the latter who created offices across most agencies with staff, including dozens of people at the State Department. Under Trump many of those staffs have shrunk and director positions have been lef t unfilled. However, he has expanded greatly the access to the White House of conservative Christians, evangelicals in particular, but also Catholics who feel alarmed by the growing legal tension between gay rights and conservative religious rights.
It wasn’t clear if there were concrete changes that would come with the executive order, though Johnnie Moore, spokesman for the president’s evangelical advisory group — his only faith advisory group with regular access — said the initiative included an order to every department “to work on faith-based partnerships.”
That, Moore said, “represents a widespread expansion of a program that has historically done very effective work and now can do even greater work.”
Moore mentioned an emphasis on faith-based partnerships focusing on prison reform, education, mental health and “strengthening families.” Faith-based groups always have been in such partnerships, but federal law requires that the government not show preference for one faith or put recipients in the position where they are essentially proselytized to in order to receive care.
The ceremony was held on National Day of Prayer and featured prayers from various faith leaders, including Cissie Graham Lynch, the granddaughter of the late evangelist Billy Graham; Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Catholic archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Levi Shemtov, the longtime Washington leader for the Chabad Lubavitch movement, and also the rabbi where Jared and Ivanka attend services in town.
Melissa Rogers, who served as executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships under Obama, said that protecting religious freedom should be a key aim of the government.
“At the event today, President Trump should retract and apologize for his call for ‘ a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,’” she said. “President Trump should also pledge to respect and vigorously protect the equal rights of Americans of all faiths and none, including the rights of American Muslims to religious freedom.”
Rabbi Jonah Pesner said that he has “grave concerns” about the new order and its ability to let faith groups play a key role in government programs while also protecting “the rights all people, regardless of their faith. We have already seen efforts by this administration to undermine essential rules ... thereby threatening religious liberty.”