Written by Don Byrd
In the newest edition of Cathedral Age, published by the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., both President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney answered questions about the role of faith in their lives, in their policy, and the vision they have for the intersection of faith and policy in America. There are lots of interesting tidbits, some of them relevant to the election and many of them not. Here’s one of the more interesting set of answers, which the candidates submitted by e-mail:
Question: how can our government and faith communities work together as a positive force for the nation while also respecting the boundaries between the two?
Obama: I think we’ve made some important progress on this issue during my time as president through our work with my Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The constitutional principle of a separation between church and state has served our nation well since our founding—embraced by people of faith and those of no faith at all throughout our history—and it has been paramount in our work. That is why I signed an executive order that implemented recommendations from my Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships that included some of our nation’s top church/state experts. We’ve also expanded how the government views partnerships with faith-based and non-profit organizations from solely a financial focus to include non-financial partnerships.
I have also had the approach that partnerships are a two-way street. Faith communities often know their cities better than most anyone else. They also have an institutional memory and history of service that we have and can continue to learn from. On the other hand, the federal government has tools and resources that faith communities often do not have. We’ve been intentional about connecting non-profits in the same field with one another to share best practices, or to form private sector partnerships. in a field like mentoring, we’ve brought corporations to the table to facilitate private funding for non-profits doing this work. On an issue like human trafficking, we’ve worked with faith communities not only to care for trafficking survivors through financial partnerships but also to inform their congregations about how to identify possible trafficking victims through non-financial partnerships.
We can always do better, and we’re getting better every day, but one of the greatest sources of optimism for me over these last four years has been to see so many heroic and humble Americans serving others out of the kindness of their hearts, and the moral imperative of their most core beliefs.
Romney: As governor of Massachusetts, I worked hard to promote faith-based social-service organizations, and I appointed my wife, Ann, to lead my efforts. Clearly the boundaries between church and state must be respected, but there is a large space in which faith-based organizations can do good for the community in which they serve. in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. The Founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation “under God,” and in God, we do indeed trust.
