Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report, and a frequent guest on State of Belief, has posted an interview with Rev. Gaddy about the White House office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships entitled Critic of White House Faith-Based Office Joins Task Force on Reforming It. Rev. Gaddy says in the inteview that:

I have thought all along it would be best not to have such an office, and I still have that opinion. But if there’s going to be an office, I want to do everything I can to see that it is constitutional in nature and that it operates both legally and in the spirit of protecting the First Amendment’s historic separation between religious institutions and government institutions.

The most dangerous thing to do in Washington these days is to stand between Dick Cheney and a microphone. He’s been talking A LOT, especially in his futile attempt to prove that torture is a good policy. Yesterday he spoke at the National Press Club - mostly about torture, but he also made a revelation on another major issue. The former veep declared:

I think that freedom means freedom for everyone. As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish.

It’s kind of ironic that the most powerful vice-president in American history was apparently powerless to stop his boss, President Bush, from declaring support to amend the Constitution to declare marriage to be a union of one man and one woman. Oh well.

Taken in light of the recent comments from John McCain’s campaign manager (warning of the Republicans becoming a theocratic party), this could be seen as good news for the future of the Republican Party. But, as with every political statement, there is a catch. Cheney also said:

The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don’t support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis.

That’s not so encouraging. It’s the equivalent of saying you supported desegregation without supporting the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Constitution guarantees equal protection to all persons regardless of what state they live in. In fact Congress is specifically authorized to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment through legislation. If marriage equality is left to the states, discrimination will continue linger in corners of this country for decades.

So two steps forward, one step back.

James Madison must be exhausted. The poor guy just can’t catch a break – with all of the government interference in religion (the faith-based initiative-turned-partnership) and religious interference in politics (Propositions 8, 102 and 2), he’s probably been rolling over in his grave nonstop for years.

The latest offense against religious freedom is Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University deciding to kick its chapter of College Democrats off-campus, a decision they announced late last week.

Usually when you hear about a student organization getting kicked off-campus, it’s a Greek that’s had its charter revoked for hazing. At Liberty, it’s apparently the desire for two-sided political discourse that will get you asked to leave.

Liberty University, which shares the conservative Christian views of its founder, Jerry Falwell, didn’t approve the presence of any student group affiliated with the Democratic Party (although College Republicans has been a presence on campus for some time) until this past October, when they recognized a chapter of College Democrats. Recognition was granted on the condition that its members would support neither gay marriage nor abortion – two issues that are major no-nos at Liberty.

The students say they’ve held up their end of the bargain. Unfortunately, Liberty’s powers-that-be have decided that endorsing candidates – something the College Republicans also practice and is in the College Democrats’ constitution, which its president, Brian Diaz, says was approved by the university – who “clearly promoted abortion” violates their agreement, and have revoked their recognition of the student organization.

Legally, Liberty has done nothing wrong. They’re a private institution, and as such they can make whatever decisions they want about student organizations.

But (and let me just insert here that I would be making the same argument if this were a liberal college denying its students a College Republicans chapter) one of the purposes of a college education is to teach you to discuss things – important things, big things, change-the-world things – with your peers. Those who agree with you, and those who don’t. In the real world, your peers aren’t limited to far-right conservatives who vehemently oppose both a woman’s right to choose and the (future, I hope) right of any couple to be married by the government. In the real world, you have to learn how to express your opinion, your reasoning for believing as you do and your rationale for disagreeing with “the opposition” – and be civil about it. (Not to mention that in the ivory tower of academia, rational discourse and the exchange of ideas are supposed to be sacred.)

Liberty has a perfect right to do what they did – but choosing to do so shows their poor sportsmanship, small-mindedness and fear of anything beyond the extremely limited scope of their definition of the norm.

I’m not kidding, though I wish I were. Check out H. Con. Res. 121 offered by Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA):

Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the President is encouraged–

(1) to designate an appropriate year as `The National Year of the Bible’; and

(2) to issue a proclamation calling upon citizens of all faiths to rediscover and apply the priceless, timeless message of the Holy Scripture which has profoundly influenced and shaped the United States and its great democratic form of Government, as well as its rich spiritual heritage, and which has unified, healed, and strengthened its people for over 200 years.

Isn’t it funny how when lawmakers say one thing, they often mean the exact opposite? This bill is supposed to promote unity and healing? The best way to promote unity and healing is to celebrate America’s vast religious diversity and our Constitution which keeps government out of the business of enforcing religion on a free people.

Likewise, check out this whopper. Rep. Broun told Politico: “This [resolution] doesn’t have anything to do with Christianity.” Rather, he concocted some story about the Bible’s central role in our history and heritage. Remember when Christian conservatives at least had the courage and honesty to admit they were trying to make the United States as a Christian nation? Now theocracy is cloaked in smoke and mirrors.

This resolution led Rep. Barney Frank to issue the quote of the day: “What is 2012 the year of? The Quran?” Somehow I think Rep. Broun might object to that proposal…

Today is the National Day of Prayer. What exactly does that mean? President Truman signed a bill in 1952 creating the holiday and the president is required by law to issue a proclamation annually celebrating the day.

Somewhere along the line, the Religious Right attempted to hijack this holiday and limit its reach to only conservative evangelical Christians. If you visit the website www.nationaldayofprayer.org, you will be redirected to the the homepage of the National Day of Prayer Task Force. Sounds very official, right? Not so, it is not a government entity – it is a front group for Focus on the Family run by James Dobson’s wife, Shirley. Dobson’s Task Force only allows Christians to participate in their events, and they have been very successful in getting governors and presidents to adopt proclamations in keeping with their theological beliefs.

This year the Interfaith Alliance, in parternship with the website Jews on First, fought back. We sent the White House a letter urging President Obama to reject the Task Force’s spin on the National Day of Prayer and emphasize an inclusive, multi-faith approach to the holiday.

Well, this afternoon the White House issued its proclamation, the highlight of which reads:

[W]e continue to live in a Nation where people of all faiths can worship or not worship according to the dictates of their conscience.

Needless to say, we are pretty happy that the president adopted our suggested approach. We put out a press release this afternoon, and the president of the Interfaith Alliance, Rev. Welton Gaddy, will be on Rachel Maddow’s show tonight to discuss today’s events in more detail.

Last week the Dallas Morning News announced it was eliminating religion coverage from its paper. The Dallas Morning News used to have an award-winning religion section, stewarded by several excellent reporters. Fortunately, the religion reporters have not been laid off, but they have been reassigned to other beats on the paper.

Conservative blogger Rod Dreher commented on this development:

[I]t is a shame, and indeed more than a shame, to think that the DMN’s Religion section used to be routinely acclaimed within the profession as the best religion section in the country.

I couldn’t agree more (and Rod Dreher and I hardly agree on anything).

Terry Mattingly, himself an experienced religion reporter, notes:

This is certainly a day of mourning for journalists who know anything about the history of religion-news coverage in the mainstream press.

We at the Interfaith Alliance will miss these reporters and the excellent coverage they produced. Newspapers are important to the vitality of American democracy now more than ever. And readership is up in the past decade, though print subscriptions are down. It makes me downright angry that the business executives in the news business can’t figure out a way to keep newspapers afloat.

According to the LA Times:

Egyptians are cautiously rejoicing over the recent appointment of a veiled Egyptian American Muslim woman as an advisor to President Obama.

Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, was appointed this month to Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Arabs are closely watching for signs that the new leadership in Washington is making efforts to improve relations with Islam, which many Muslims believe were severely damaged during the eight years of the Bush administration. The selection of Mogahed is viewed by many in the Middle East as a step by Obama to move beyond the stereotypes and prejudices that Muslims believe they have encountered since the attacks Sept. 11, 2001.

If you would like to see the complete list of the panel members, you can visit here.

A rough count of the religious diversity on the president faith-based initiative panel yields the following tallies:

• 14 Christians/Christian organizations
• 3 Jews/Jewish organizations
• 2 Muslims
• 1 Hindu
• 5 secular organizations

What do you think? Is this diverse enough? Considering the president is calling this program the Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, do you think there is too much faith and not enough neighborhoods represented?

From the Religion News Service:

In years past,…a White House liaison has contacted the [National Day of Prayer Task Force headed by Shirley Dobson] at least a month in advance to ask about their participation in the White House events that featured music, Scripture readings and remarks by the president and Shirley Dobson.

She and her husband, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, were seated prominently in the front row next to the president and first lady.

The White House, which usually does not officially announce events until shortly before they occur, declined to comment on whether it would even hold an event this year, much less who would be invited.

“Prayer is very important to the president’s life,” said Joshua DuBois, executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, on Sunday (April 19). “It’s too early to talk about the planning around that.”

What will Obama do? Will he refuse to hold a National Day of Prayer ceremony at all? This seems unlikely given how badly he has courted the votes of Catholics and evangelical Christians. Will he embrace the Religious Right as he did by inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration?

Or will he celebrate the National Day of Prayer from a multi-faith perspective? Such an approach would be in keeping with his statement in his inaugural address: “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers.”

Well the National Day of Prayer is just weeks away. Stay tuned for more coverage of this issue here.

The race for the White House may have ended months ago, but the campaign is still reverberating. See for example this story from the Huffington Post about John McCain’s campaign manager:

Speaking publicly for one of the first times since the end of the presidential campaign, John McCain’s campaign manager Steve Schmidt painted a dire portrait of the state of the Republican Party, arguing that the GOP has largely been co-opted by its religious elements.

“If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party,” Schmidt declared. “And in a free country, a political party cannot be viable in the long term if it is seen as a sectarian party.”

We agree. Sectarian parties (whether liberal or conservative in ideology) are harmful to the sanctity of religion and the integrity of government. And it’s refreshing to hear that some Republicans feel the same way.

But at the same time, I can’t help but notice that Mr. Schmidt used religion as a campaign tactic, much like past political campaigns. Remember the campaign commercial called The One? But to be fair, President Obama’s campaign also used religion as a political tool as well. He printed campaign brochure describing himself as a Committed Christian, as if that were a constitutional requirement for someone running for the White House.

There is plenty of blame to go around. I just hope that the next campaign that Steve Schmidt works on he makes a genuine commitment to changing the way religion is used (or abused) in the political process. But we can’t change the political process without frank admissions of uncomfortable truths such as what Schmidt just said. This is a great first step.

I was a little surprised when I read Paul Waldman’s commentary in the American Prospect magazine entitled:

We’ve Already Won the Battle Over Gay Marriage

Did I miss that particular memo? Marriage is defined as between one man and one woman in 30 state constitutions, including ten states that voted for Obama in 2008. Every time a gay marriage ban has been on the ballot, it has passed with one exception (but a few years later it passed on the second try). In 2004, putting gay marriage bans on the ballot may have been the single biggest boost to George Bush’s reelection because it energized conservative voters. Only one state legislature has passed a bill making it legal for same-gender couples to marry. Yes, there have been a few crucial victories from state supreme courts, but those victories have caused many of these anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives. I could go on and on.

Don’t get me wrong - I support equal rights for same-gender couples. I would love to celebrate a victory, but I don’t think we have achieved it yet. And there are some very encouraging signs of changes in public opinion that will make future victories a little easier to come by. But the Religious Right is not dead. Wounded? Maybe, but not dead. I would not underestimate the resources and vigor they will bring to fights on same-gender marriage in the next few years. Rather than rest on our laurels and claim victory prematurely, we need to get ready for the coming fights.