Some see the new presidential order announced quietly on Thursday, May 3rd as strengthening important freedoms and the nation’s religious roots. Others say it does exactly the opposite.
The Executive Order on the Establishment of a White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative places President Trump’s stamp on longstanding efforts, begun in the Clinton administration, to balance the important societal role of faith-based organizations with respecting the diversity of the nation’s religious communities and the constitutional requirement to keep church and state apart.
You may remember that a version of this executive order was scheduled to be announced on last year’s Day of Prayer but was later withdrawn. Michael Wyland wrote then that:
An early draft version of the executive order was leaked, allegedly by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and published by the Nation on its website, provoking objections which caused the Trump administration to withdraw the document. Politico reports that Vice President Mike Pence “and a small team of conservative allies quickly began working behind the scenes to revise the language, and in recent weeks have ratcheted up the pressure on Trump to sign it.” The revised executive order strips language affecting LGBTQ rights. “This executive order isn’t about discrimination,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Anything currently illegal under current law would still be illegal.”
Readers will recall that Vice President Mike Pence has a passion for these issues, having signed a state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 2015 as the governor of Indiana. The law opened the door to discrimination against the LGBT community and it prompted a widespread boycott of the state by businesses, foundations, and others.
In announcing the order during the 2018 White House’s National Day of Prayer ceremony, the president said, “The faith initiative will help design new policies that recognize the vital role of faith in our families, our communities, and our great country. This office will also help ensure that faith-based organizations have equal access to government funding and the equal right to exercise their deeply held beliefs…We take this step because we know that, in solving the many, many problems and our great challenges, faith is more powerful than government, and nothing is more powerful than God.”
Trying to include faith-based organizations and their community-based strengths in the government’s efforts to attack important societal problems and access government funding may not be new, but emphasizing that the government will bow to their “deeply held beliefs” is very different. Many faith-based organizations saw this as a positive step, making it easier for such organizations to partner with the federal government. By recognizing the importance of “deeply held beliefs,” it will allow them to structure programs to reflect their views on such issues as the rights of members of the LBGTQ community or access to reproductive health care, including abortion. According to the Washington Post, “a top faith advisor to Trump said the aim was a culture change producing less conversation about church-state barriers ‘without all of these arbitrary concerns as to what is appropriate.’”
Read the full story at Nonprofit Quarterly
