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At Beliefnet's Progressive Revival blog, Ed Kilgore takes a dissenting view of Obama's new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and its accompanying Advisory Council. In particular, Kilgore objects to the implication that religious people have better ideas about solving our societal crises, noting that the initiative "puts 'God in a box,' as though believers have a different point of view than that of Americans generally concerned with achieving peace, justice, or public morality." What's more, he adds, it we're going to have such an endeavor, "it can't possibly represent its constituency, and may well sell it short, even as it poses troubling questions about the proper role of religious organizations in the liberal American tradition that has been so beneficial to religious freedom, growth and diversity." He concludes:
I'd encourage President Obama to in turn encourage people of faith to engage with his administration, cheek by jowl with each other and with nonbelievers, on the broad front of public policy. We don't need our own little public policy bureaucracy, staffed by "representatives" who may be significantly compromised by their inclusion in the charmed circle of insiders, at the expense of their vocation to witness fully for the faith. That's the dreadful mistake that so many self-appointed Christian Leaders made during the Bush Era. In that respect, as in many others, some real change is in order.I'd add something more to Kilgore's assessment: there's an untapped network of progressive religious people, who don't want some special seat at a White House table, don't want to compromise their beliefs on social, sexual, and economic issues for the sole and completely elusive goal of defusing the right's lousy, mean-spirited "culture war," and who share with the broader progressive movement a commitment to real policy and legislative changes that will advance long-lasting and meaningful economic justice. I discussed some of them in last week's FundamentaList, in which I also argued in the context of religious activism, as John Judis does today more broadly, that Obama needs agitators, not cheerleaders. Perhaps there's potential in a coalition of agitators who could challenge the allure of playing to a perceived religious and economic center.--Sarah Posner
