This translation is not completely accurate as it was
automatically generated by a computer.
Powered by
A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*
1:00 P.M. EST March 12, 2010
Members of the President's Advisory Council on Faith-based and
Neighborhood Partnerships included, from left, the Revs. Jim Wallis and
Peg Chemberlin and Rabbi David Saperstein. UMNS photos by Bud Heckman.
View in Photo Gallery
An “ambitious” 164-page report submitted to the White House this week
on partnerships with faith-based organizations already is having an
impact, says a United Methodist involved in the process.
The more than 60 recommendations from the President’s Advisory
Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships also have
implications for United Methodists, added the Rev. Donald “Bud” Heckman,
a United Methodist pastor who sat on the council’s Inter-religious
Cooperation Task Force.
“This report has an overriding focus on those whom our Scriptures
call ‘the least of these,’” he said.
“There are several dozen recommendations that will mean changes in
people’s lives for the better. Some of them are big—like changing how we
measure and treat poverty—and some of them small—specific techniques to
bolster fatherhood and healthy families.”
The council was formed a year ago after President Obama announced he
would maintain the White House office created by President George W.
Bush to work with faith-based partners.
Heckman, director for external relations of the New York-based
Religions for Peace, credits the young staff of the new White House
Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships for guiding the
shape of the report, which was presented to the President on March 9.
Joshua DuBois, a Pentecostal pastor and former campaign aide, and his
deputy, Mara Vanderslice, gathered a broad array of people—including
those representing federal agencies—to wrestle quietly with difficult
questions and build consensus. A number of the recommendations already
are being implemented because “there is enough agreement on all sides
for that to go forward,” Heckman said.
Besides coordinating the advisory council, whose members serve
one-year terms, the White House office forms partnerships between
nonprofit organizations and all levels of government, including the
centers “for faith-based and community initiatives” relating to 12
federal agencies.
“The real genius of the Obama administration was to bring people
together in task forces who disagreed with one another, people of
different political stripes, religious backgrounds, even representative
of diversity within religious communities,” he explained. “This meant
that we embodied the diversity of the American public in our very
process with one another.”
‘Respect and civility’
In a posting on the White House Web site, DuBois lauded the consensus
achieved by participants in the report. “We note with pride the respect
and civility council and task force members have shown one another
throughout this process, even as they worked to provide advice on some
of the toughest issues we face as a nation,” he wrote.
The Inter-religious Cooperation Task Force began its work last
spring, drafting and redrafting recommendations over the next months.
Reports from it and the other five task forces—economic recovery and
domestic poverty, environment and climate change, fatherhood and healthy
families, global poverty and development and reform of White House
office—were incorporated in the final report.
Religions for Peace, recognized by The United Methodist Church as its
outlet for interreligious relations, is using the report as a tool for
international dialogue “about constructive and productive relationships
between religious communities and governments,” Heckman said.
One important recommendation from the advisory council report is to
update the current federal guidelines for measuring poverty, said the
Rev. Peg Chemberlin, one of the 25 council members. A Moravian pastor,
she is president of the National Council of Churches and executive
director of the Minnesota Council of Churches.
“Current federal guidelines for measuring poverty have not been
updated since the 1960s and are woefully inadequate in helping assess
levels of poverty in America today,” Chemberlin wrote in a March 10 blog
on the Huffington Post. “A new standard is needed.”
The advisory council urged President Obama to “utilize the knowledge,
expertise and on-the-ground experience of local faith-based and
community organizations to redefine the federal poverty guideline so it
more accurately measures and responds to the needs of low-income
people.”
America's churches are continuing to respond to the call to care for
the poor, Chemberlin noted. “But without a means of accurately gauging
the needs of our communities and the ability to direct federal resources
where they can do the most good, millions will continue to go hungry,
homeless and forgotten,” she said.
The full report can be found online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ofbnp-council-final-report.pdf.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New
York.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
Korean News
About UMC.org
RSS Feed
Press Center
Contact Us