Future leader of Biden's White House Faith Partnerships: A Look at the top contenders
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(ANALYSIS) “My whole soul was in it today. On this January day, my whole soul is in this: bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause.” These words were spoken by President Joe Biden as part of his inaugural speech on Jan. 20, 2021.
Biden’s emphasis on uniting our nation, and his implicit reference to the role of faith in declaring his “whole soul” was in it, are significant. It remains to be seen how the Biden administration will advance an approach to working together across differences, particularly between government and diverse faith-based and community-based organizations. Whatever approach the Biden administration takes, it will be building upon over two decades of bipartisan principles advancing faith-based and government collaboration.
Two Decades of Faith-Based and Community Partnership Offices in the Federal Government
The “Charitable Choice” provision, passed in the 1996 welfare reform law, requires the government to select the most effective organizations for services partnerships, whether faith-based or not. Neither faith-based nor secular organizations should be asked to surrender their distinct values and approaches as a condition to entering into such partnerships with the government to provide social services. The Charitable Choice rules protect the religious identity of faith-based organizations, including their right to consider religion in their staffing practices. But they also require religious organizations to respect the religious freedom of services recipients.
The Bush administration extended the Charitable Choice principles by means of “Equal Treatment” regulations and also developed a government infrastructure to carry out this “both/and '' approach in government-funded services. George W. Bush founded the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and counterpart Centers in major federal departments. These offices were tasked with assuring that federal officials understood that faith-based and secular organizations must be treated equally when competing for government funding. These offices also served as liaisons between faith-based and other community organizations and the government, removing barriers to partnerships on both sides.
President Barack Obama sustained the general framework of the “equal treatment” rules, as well as federal faith-based and community-based offices. President Trump created a White House Advisor for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives and renamed the Centers accordingly.
What Will Biden Do?
President Biden is widely expected to maintain some version of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and Centers in various federal agencies. The Biden administration has yet to announce any concrete plans, but faith-based and community-based leaders and organizations should be carefully following developments in coming weeks that may tell us something of Biden’s vision and priorities for his administration’s faith-based and community-based initiative.
One key question is who President Biden will appoint to lead a White House Partnerships Office. Below is a brief list of three names about which there has been speculation.
Note this list is not exhaustive, nor reflective of all the potential directions Biden could go. Although this list names specific people, it is equally important to pay attention to the types of approaches to religious freedom and faith-based and government partnerships that each of these individuals bring to the table. The list is meant to help readers ask questions about the future of domestic religious freedom and religious diversity in government partnerships under the Biden administration.
Josh Dickson- The Biden Campaign Faith Engagement Expert
Josh Dickson is a 36-year-old evangelical who directed the Biden campaign’s faith outreach effort. Dickson also served as the director of the Department of Commerce’s partnership office under President Obama. Dickson’s faith outreach campaign for Biden in the 2020 election brought together faith leaders of different theological traditions, races, ethnicities and even ideological backgrounds. Dickson’s faith outreach did generally resonate with religious leaders and organizations which tended to lean left of center theologically and socially, but he also substantially engaged conservative Catholic leaders and those from the National Association of Evangelicals.
Dickson, while upholding reproductive freedoms and LGBTQ rights, will need to further articulate, as will the Biden administration, their vision for how the government should engage organizations that hold different beliefs. This will be especially prevalent for theologically conservative faith leaders and institutions concerned about their religious freedom to continue to serve and staff according to their most deeply held beliefs. Dickson hopes to find common ground with religious conservatives on issues like alleviating poverty, refugee resettlement, criminal justice reform and addressing COVID-19.
Michael Wear - The Evangelical White House Partnerships Alum
Michael Wear is an evangelical, millennial Democratic political strategist and leading voice on faith and public life. Wear served in President Obama’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships during his first term. As a young White House staffer, Wear guided engagement with religious conservatives and focused on common ground social issues like child placement and ending human trafficking. In the 2012 presidential election, as Wear directed President Obama’s faith outreach campaign, Buzzfeed dubbed him one of President Obama’s “ambassadors to America’s believers.”
In 2020, Wear provided strategic guidance to the bipartisan, Christian political action committee Not Our Faith, focused on making a religious-values case against reelecting President Trump. Religious leaders and organizations with theologically orthodox beliefs about marriage and nascent life may believe Wear’s leadership could offer more protections for their place in the public square without being asked to abandon the values they hold sacred. Wear laid out a vision in his 2017 book Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America that made clear that faith-based organizations, including those with conservative religious beliefs, are an essential partner for any federal government which prioritizes serving the least among us.
Melissa Rogers - Long-serving, Below the Radar Contender
Melissa Rogers served as special assistant to President Barack Obama and executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Rogers currently serves as a nonresident senior fellow in Governance Studies for the Brookings Institute and a visiting professor at Wake Forest University Divinity School. Rogers has specialized legal knowledge and experience with the deep details and disputes about partnership policies and holds a place of respect she has won across the religious and political spectrum. Rogers served as the Baptist Join Committee’s general counsel and as the executive director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
In 2020, just before last November’s election, Rogers coauthored A Time to Heal, A Time to Build, with E. J. Dionne. This significant report recommends the next administration to revive the faith-based initiative after its marginalization during the past four years. The report calls for a renewed White House partnership office situated in the Domestic Policy Council, rather than the public relations-oriented Office of Public Liaison, where it was under Trump. Rogers, although perhaps the least feasible candidate, does have much in common with Biden himself. She is a mainstay, a principled moderate, a constant in the ever-evolving field of church-state policy. And, like Biden himself, her humble, low-profile consistency could resonate deeply with a President who took a similar approach to his own public servanthood.
Chelsea Langston Bombino is a believer in sacred communities, a wife, and a mother. She serves as a program officer with the Fetzer Institute and a fellow with the Center for Public Justice.