Pubdate: Mon, 29 Jan 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
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Author: Frank Bruni and Laurie Goodstein

NEW BUSH OFFICE SEEKS CLOSER TIES TO CHURCH GROUPS

WASHINGTON   President Bush has selected a University of Pennsylvania 
professor of political science to head the first federal office intended to 
promote the integration of religious groups into federally financed social 
services, several Bush advisers said today.

The advisers said the opening of the office and the appointment of John J. 
DiIulio Jr. to fill it would almost certainly be announced at a White House 
event on Monday, and they acknowledged that it would draw heated opposition 
from organizations and religious groups that advocate a strict separation 
of church and state.

But the encouragement and government financing of faith-based programs was 
a signature campaign issue for Mr. Bush, who has said he reads the Bible 
every day. And the decision to entrust the new federal office in charge of 
that effort to Mr. DiIulio, a widely published expert on juvenile crime 
with impressive academic credentials, is an example of the political 
caution with which the Bush administration will proceed.

The choice of Mr. DiIulio, in fact, is only one of several ways in which 
Mr. Bush and his aides are trying to blunt any impression that what the 
president is doing amounts to an evangelical endeavor.

"John is a social scientist who believes in empirical evidence," said one 
Bush adviser, stressing Mr. DiIulio's focus on provable results from 
faith-based social programs that address problems like substance abuse, 
youth violence and teenage pregnancy. The adviser also emphasized that Mr. 
DiIulio does not see faith-based programs "as a panacea," but rather as one 
arrow in a quiver with plenty of others.

In addition to Mr. DiIulio, the other central figure in the effort is 
Stephen Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis who was the chief 
domestic policy adviser for Mr. Bush's presidential campaign.

Several Bush advisers said Mr. Goldsmith would be the chairman of a new 
national advisory board whose work will complement that of the new federal 
office. Mr. Goldsmith will also serve as an official adviser to Mr. Bush on 
the issue.

Mr. Bush and his aides do not want the proposals related to faith-based 
programs that they unveil to seem too driven by religion. Indeed, the 
president's goal is to find new ways for the federal government to 
encourage private charities -- including but not limited to religious 
groups -- to provide more social services.

To that end, the title of the new federal office will allude not just to 
faith-based programs but also to community initiatives, although several 
advisers said the order in which the words "faith" and "community" would be 
placed was under debate.

Additionally, Mr. Bush has invited not only leaders of faith-based groups 
but also the heads of other not-for-profit organizations to meet on Monday 
morning at the White House to kick off a week of events intended to 
describe and promote the president's vision.

The guest list, according to one of the people on it, includes the Rev. 
Stephen E. Burger, executive director of the Association of Gospel Rescue 
Missions; Sara E. Melendez, president and chief executive officer of 
Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofit organizations and foundations; 
and Millard Fuller, founder and president of Habitat for Humanity 
International, the ecumenical house-building group.

"It is about faith-based institutions, but it's also about more than that," 
said another Bush adviser, referring to Mr. Bush's plan to encourage 
private groups to administer more of the kinds of local programs often 
provided by government.

A more thorough integration of faith-based and other not-for-profit groups 
into federally financed social services is a cornerstone of compassionate 
conservatism, a political philosophy with which Mr. Bush has strongly 
identified himself.

Compassionate conservatism holds that while the government should limit the 
scope of the social services it provides, it should take an active role as 
a catalyst and source of financing for work done by neighborhood and 
religious groups.

Mr. Bush has said some of the groups with the best results for 
rehabilitating prisoners or fighting drug abuse are ones that take 
religious and spiritual approaches. He has also said the government should 
not hesitate to give money to these groups, as long as secular groups that 
provide similar services are also available.

There are signs that these initiatives may elicit bipartisan support. This 
morning, on the ABC News program "This Week," Representative Richard A. 
Gephardt of Missouri, the House minority leader, signaled interest in Mr. 
Bush's approach.

The Bush administration will roll out these initiatives with the utmost 
care, under the guidance of Mr. DiIulio, who is Catholic, and Mr. 
Goldsmith, who is Jewish.

Although both are well liked by religious conservatives, neither is an 
ideological lightning rod like Marvin Olasky, another proponent of 
faith-based programs and compassionate conservatism. Mr. Olasky was with 
Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. DiIulio at a long meeting with Mr. Bush in Austin, 
Tex., nearly two years ago.

"It's not just that we're paying attention to the politics of it," one of 
the Bush advisers said. "We're paying attention to the pragmatics of it. I 
think we're doing it right, and I think we're going to be careful about it."

Mr. DiIulio's resume makes him seem like a personification of Mr. Bush's 
attempts to retain the support of religious conservatives while also 
courting moderates and building a broad base of support.

He is a fellow at both the Manhattan Institute, which is a conservative 
think tank, and the Brookings Institute, which is not. In a two-month 
period in the summer of 1999, he wrote major articles for The Weekly 
Standard, a conservative publication, and for The New Democrat, a moderate 
one. He identifies himself as a new Democrat.

Mr. DiIulio has also done extensive work with black pastors in urban areas, 
and one of the Bush administration's hopes is that its advocacy of 
faith-based programs will be a bridge to black ministers and win some 
support with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Mr. Bush garnered the support of about 9 percent of black voters in the 
presidential election and has been reaching out aggressively to African- 
Americans ever since. This morning, he, his wife, Laura, and his parents 
attended a Methodist church here with a predominantly black congregation.

For years, Mr. DiIulio, who taught at Princeton before the University of 
Pennsylvania, was known more for his work on criminal justice issues than 
on his interest in faith-based programs. He was among the voices loudly 
advocating increased prison construction in the early 1990's and wrote a 
1996 book about the war against crime, "Body Count," with John P. Walters 
and William J. Bennett, the former education secretary and drug czar.

Mr. Goldsmith, a former prosecutor, was a two-term mayor in Indianapolis 
who privatized everything from golf course construction to sewage treatment 
and showed an interest in revitalizing long-neglected inner-city 
neighborhoods. Late in his second term, he started the Front Porch 
Alliance, a group that acted as a liaison between religious congregations 
- -- mostly urban African-American churches -- and government.

For his work with churches, Mr. Goldsmith, a Republican, was lauded by many 
evangelical Christian leaders. But some Jewish leaders said they were 
nervous about an approach that redirects tax dollars to churches.

"There's a lot of respect for Stephen Goldsmith," said Rabbi David 
Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. 
"Many in the Jewish community know him and respect him, but any time you 
have a formal government endorsement of religion that this faith-based 
office conveys, that takes us down a path that too often in our history has 
turned out to be disastrous for religious freedom and religious tolerance."
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