As in the previous administration, many federal agencies under the Obama White House include a "faith-based" office. During President Bush's "Faith-Based Initiative" era, these offices primarily served to ensure that religious organizations had access to federal funding distributed by the agency. Since President Obama's faith-based director Joshua Dubois has said that the new adminstration does not view the role of partnerships to be concerned primarily with funding, the Washington Post's Michelle Boorstein asks a sensible question: "What do the White House's faith offices DO, exactly?"
Sure, we know generally that the offices help faith-based and other nonprofits that run programs on things like job training, but let's get more specific. Which groups do they help and fund, and for what projects? Have their priorities changed since the offices were run by the Bush White House? Does the office at USAID, for example, get involved in the many millions of dollars of contracts related to sex and family planning overseas? And what does the Justice Department faith office do?
So far, she says, she hasn't received answers from the White House, or the agency faith-based offices.
