By BJC Staff Reports with Religion News Service
This year, the Obama administration added six individuals to the list of those who will serve on the third and final President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. These six are in addition to the 18 names released in September.
In May, the administration announced three individuals who would join the council: Barbara Satin, Manjit Singh and Naseem Kourosh.
Satin is the assistant faith work director for the National LGBTQ Task Force. A member of the United Church of Christ, she is the first transgender woman to serve on the council. Singh is co-founder and board chairman of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Kourosh is the human rights officer at the U.S. Baha’i Office of Public Affairs. In that role since 2011, she has worked to address international religious freedom and to advance the rights of persecuted Baha’i communities.
In January, the White House announced three other appointments: Rachel Held Evans, author of a popular blog and books including A Year of Biblical Womanhood; the Rev. Traci Blackmon, acting executive minister of the United Church of Christ’s Justice and Witness Ministries; and the Rev. Adam Hamilton, founding pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas – the largest Methodist congregation in the United States.
The six announced this year are in addition to the 18 named in September, which included a mix of religious and nonprofit leaders. Some of the September appointees were Bishop Carroll Baltimore, former president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention; the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World; the Rev. Jennifer Butler, CEO of Faith in Public Life; Rabbi Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs; David Jeffrey, National Commander of the Salvation Army USA; Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America; and Jasjit Singh, executive director of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
The Obama administration created the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in February 2009, which makes recommendations to the administration on how to improve partnerships. The inaugural council was chaired by Melissa Rogers, who now serves as the executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
From the June 2016 edition of Report from the Capital. Click here to view the issue as a PDF document.
