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Biden to sign executive order reestablishing White House faith office
Religion News Service ^ | February 14, 2021 | Jack Jenkins, Adelle M. Banks

Posted on 02/14/2021 3:24:15 PM PST by ebb tide

Biden to sign executive order reestablishing White House faith office

The order reappoints Melissa Rogers, who headed the office under President Barack Obama.

WASHINGTON (RNS) — President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Sunday (Feb. 14) reestablishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, undoing former President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape an agency that went largely unstaffed for most of his tenure.

In a statement accompanying the announcement of the executive order, Biden echoed his recent remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast, bemoaning widespread physical and economic suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic, racism and climate change. He added that those struggling “are fellow Americans” and are deserving of aid.

“This is not a nation that can, or will, simply stand by and watch the suffering around us. That is not who we are. That is not what faith calls us to be,” he said. “That is why 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.”

He added: “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.”

Biden is expected to appoint Melissa Rogers, a First Amendment lawyer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution to oversee the office, as Rogers did in former President Barack Obama’s second term. Rogers will also serve as senior director for faith and public policy in the White House Domestic Policy Council.


RELATED: Cultivate common ground regarding faith in public life, says Melissa Rogers


The office’s deputy director will be Josh Dickson, who ran faith outreach for the Biden-Harris campaign. Trey Baker, who worked as the National Director of African American Engagement on Biden’s campaign, will serve as the White House office’s liaison to Black communities, a role that includes Black religious groups.

Besides fighting the pandemic and racism and assisting with economic recovery, the office will focus its efforts on helping disadvantaged communities, advancing global humanitarian work, strengthening pluralism and protecting “cherished guarantees of church-state separation and freedom for people of all faiths and none.”

The announcement noted that the office will work with Centers for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that are embedded in agencies across the federal government.

The faith-based office has been called by different names since President George W. Bush established it, and different presidents have granted its clients — religious and secular organizations — varying degrees of access.

Biden will return the name the office had during the Obama administration, when Rogers led it from 2013-2017.

Under President Trump, the office went largely unstaffed until 2019, when he tapped Pentecostal preacher and longtime Trump adviser Paula White to oversee what he called the Faith and Opportunity Initiative. Until then, much of Trump’s religious outreach involved informal meetings with mostly Christian faith leaders — especially a core group who became known as his unofficial evangelical advisers.

The two previous administrations made concerted efforts to connect with a wide array of faith groups, with bipartisan and interreligious access through the faith-based office, related cabinet-level offices and task forces.

Rogers has been critical of what she saw as Trump’s disproportionate engagement with evangelicals, saying in 2017 that “the continuance of this Evangelical Executive Advisory Board, even unofficially, and the apparent failure to have any comparable entity that is open to non-evangelicals, sends a troubling message that the administration prefers evangelicals over other people of faith.”


RELATED: Biden should reestablish the faith-based office


Rogers also opposed Trump administration plans to remove the requirement that faith-based social service providers offer a secular alternative to people seeking their assistance.

“You can’t benefit from protections you don’t know you have,” she tweeted in January 2020. “The religious liberty of social service beneficiaries is as important as the religious liberty of faith-based providers.”

Rogers came to Biden’s defense in August when she said Trump made “wild assertions” about the former vice president during the 2020 campaign. She said the claims by Trump that Biden would have a “no religion, no anything” approach to faith if he became president “could not be more wrong.”


TOPICS: Religion & Politics
KEYWORDS: 1stamendment; biden; brookings; brookingsinstitution; faith; falsechristians; firstamendment; melissarogers; obama; religion; rogers; tyranny
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To: a fool in paradise

ACLU MIA

If there’s one organization I’d like to see MIA, it’s the ACLU......they’ve surrendered free speech and they’ve never fought for anything I and thousands of others on the right believed in......correct me if I’m wrong.....they’re a bunch of liberals who side with everything to destroy this country.....IMHO


41 posted on 02/14/2021 4:52:40 PM PST by Dawgreg
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Comment #42 Removed by Moderator

To: Dawgreg

Since legal racial, religious, & ethnic discrimination issues have been pretty much resolved Yes there a few nicks and tatters along the edges but the bulk is done. There is very little left to keep a pack of legal “utopians” busy. So they have to dream up problems in order to keep the cash coming in.


43 posted on 02/14/2021 5:04:11 PM PST by Reily
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To: ebb tide

Press: What is the White House faith office?

Biden: Well, the man up stairs wants me to create a faith office.

Press: Who will you appoint?

Joe: I will anoint some special people on my staff, Cardinal Pelosi and the BLM choir with the Anifa choirboys.

Press: What about COVID during these troubling times?

Joe: I’ll have Father Fauci looking into that. He calms the sheep by still waters. Some of his prophesies have come true and he is a man of God who understands the importance of mask wearing when eating and having sex.

Press: So who will be in charge of all this?

Joe: Jill will be involved and Hunter will be passing the plate on Sundays. Charity beginning in the home. Jill has an excellent record collection of Tommy James and the Shondells to keep everybody singing alone. MONY MONY, HANKY PANKY... you know, man.

Press: And this is in the White House?

Joe: Yes, but I’ll have BLM paint the White House black to show that there is no white privilege here. We’ll be lighting candles and incense. This last erection season everybody stayed in to vote... now they can stay here in the faith office with the big guy.


44 posted on 02/14/2021 5:06:02 PM PST by BEJ
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To: ebb tide

Witch faith?


45 posted on 02/14/2021 5:12:19 PM PST by null and void (We, MSM, decide what news you can see, and what you can not see, don't you dare call us Not-Sees)
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To: ebb tide

I’m a Catholic. You’re a racist.
I’m a Catholic. You’re a racist.
I’m a Catholic. You’re a racist.
I’m a Catholic. You’re a racist.

I’m really impressed, Joe!


46 posted on 02/14/2021 5:13:40 PM PST by Thank You Rush ( )
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To: ebb tide

The French are ahead of us on some things.

1. hate crimes. For the longest time, the French have held that there was no such thing as a hate crime, that you could only be tried as an individual, not as a member of a group. Sadly, they have now given in and have a hate crime law (very recent, I believe).

2. the French principle of laïcité (secularism). You turn on Gab and you get a video about how the U.S. is a Christian country. Um, no. Sorry. We are a free country. We do not need any kind of government office to encourage us in our faith, whatever that may be. Stay out of it. Be French, even when you’re not at a French restaurant.


47 posted on 02/14/2021 5:37:11 PM PST by firebrand
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Kameltoe has been giving him that knowing look, so he has decided he needs to get on gods good side post haste


48 posted on 02/14/2021 5:43:26 PM PST by dsrtsage (Complexity is merely simplicity lacking imagination)
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To: ebb tide

The French are ahead of us on some things.

1. hate crimes. For the longest time, the French have held that there was no such thing as a hate crime, that you could only be tried as an individual, not as a member of a group. Sadly, they have now given in and have a hate crime law (very recent, I believe).

2. the French principle of laïcité (secularism). You turn on Gab and you get a video about how the U.S. is a Christian country. Um, no. Sorry. We are a free country. We do not need any kind of government office to encourage us in our faith, whatever that may be. Stay out of it. Be French, even when you’re not at a French restaurant.


49 posted on 02/14/2021 5:45:46 PM PST by firebrand
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To: ebb tide

“Biden echoed his recent remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast, bemoaning widespread physical and economic suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic, racism and climate change”

His 3 favorite subject and why he needs absolute control over all aspects of Americans’ lives.


50 posted on 02/14/2021 5:46:22 PM PST by antidemoncrat
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To: ebb tide

Ditto.


51 posted on 02/14/2021 5:47:16 PM PST by NetAddicted (Just looking)
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To: a fool in paradise

Why would the ACLU oppose faith in Karl Marx and Charlie Darwin?


52 posted on 02/14/2021 6:06:14 PM PST by alstewartfan (One day he just washed up on the shores of his regrets. May his soul rest in peace. Al S.)
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To: JennysCool
>> “This is not a nation that can, or will, simply stand by and watch the suffering around us. That is not who we are. That is not what faith calls us to be,” he said. <<

>> Biden "said" nothing of the kind. One of Biden's handlers wrote that statement and attributed it to him. Biden himself is enjoying a hearty bowl of Cream O' Wheat with cinnamon toast and watching reruns of "Flipper." <<

The phrasing ("this is not who we are") sounds like the same guy who wrote Obama's lofty statements, too.

53 posted on 02/14/2021 7:42:26 PM PST by BillyBoy ("States rights" is NOT a suicide pact.)
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To: Meatspace

The last two presidents used them big time. However, when congress can’t get a thing done, not much choice.


54 posted on 02/14/2021 8:11:10 PM PST by napscoordinator (Trump/Hunter, jr for President/Vice President 2016 )
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To: ebb tide

That is why 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.

What a bunch of idiotic, utopian gobbledy gook!


55 posted on 02/14/2021 8:23:00 PM PST by DennisR (Look around - God gives countless clues that He does, indeed, exist.)
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To: DennisR

I sure they’ll read Palms


56 posted on 03/17/2021 5:48:27 AM PDT by Rodm
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To: Rodm

No doubt. 😂


57 posted on 03/17/2021 8:48:11 PM PDT by DennisR (Look around - God gives countless clues that He does, indeed, exist.)
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