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April 29, 2009

Obama Works to Redefine Role of Faith in First 100 Days

by Dan Gilgoff

U.S. News & World Report

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land has worked with presidential administrations going back to Ronald Reagan’s, but he can’t remember any that has convened an advisory council composedised (sic) mostly of religious leaders, as President Obama has done. The council gives religion “an institutionally higher profile than under President Bush,” says the conservative Land, who directs public policy for the nation’s largest evangelical denomination. “No president that I’ve dealt with has had anything like it.”

Left-leaning advocacy groups agree, though they tend to be more troubled by a bigger role for religion in the White House. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, for example, is dismayed by how Obama’s faith-based office has operated so far. “Bush’s office completely disregarded the separation of church and state,” says Executive Director Barry Lynn, “and nobody sees any change from that yet.”

In his first 100 days in office, President Obama has sought a bold new role for faith in the White House, which aides say is aimed largely at dialing down the decades-old culture wars. Without changing his party’s liberal stances on social issues like abortion, for example, Obama is nonetheless attempting to reach out to religious conservatives by pledging to work toward reducing demand for abortion. And while acknowledging his party’s own secular base—he went out of his way to mention nonbelievers in his inaugural address—Obama has sought to showcase religion’s expanded role in his White House, opening his rallies with public prayer.

So far, the project has blunted the Christian right’s usual criticism of Democratic administrations, even earning plaudits from some high-profile religious conservatives. But it has also alienated some traditionally Democratic constituencies, from advocates for strict church-state separation to the gay rights movement.
http://pewforum.org/news/rss.php?NewsID=18000

More recent article - in context from the same source.

Land likes Obama.