Obama's Faith-Based Initiative

Barack Obama is giving a speech today committing to expand the federal "faith-based initiative" in terms of the amount of federal funding for religious and other community-based social services.  But unlike Bush, Obama would not allow an organization to "use [the federal] grant money" to "discriminate against ... the people [it] hire[s]" on the basis of religion.  The AP story is here; an advance text of the speech is here.

Providing greater funding to this effort than the Bush administration did is, as I've argued, a good and necessary thing.  But, as several of us here have argued, an organization hiring employees based on religion to carry out its mission should not be seen as practicing improper discrimination; and excluding those organizations is likely to undercut the breadth and effectiveness of the program.  Obama's speech also mentions that "directly" funded programs must remain secular in content.  This is a feature of the Bush initiative too; and Obama's language suggests perhaps that programs serving individuals receiving federal vouchers (i.e. programs that are "indirectly" funded) may have religious content.  More details to come, no doubt.

UPDATE: Here are the details of the plan from Obama's website; positive comments on it from former Bush faith-based czar John d'Iulio; and a critical analysis from Greg Baylor of the Christian Legal Society, which defends the right of religious organizations to hire on the basis of faith considerations.