Religious Liberty, Obama’s Surprising Soft Spot

Chuck Donovan / November 26, 2010

President Obama apparently has a soft spot in his heart for religious liberty. And the New York Times editorial board is not pleased. The president last week issued a much-awaited executive order setting government-wide policy on community-based and religious nonprofits that receive federal grants. The executive order is meant to act on the recommendations of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

That panel’s recommendations cover many topics arising in the context of federal financing of religious nonprofits, which receive and spend about one third of the money donated to U.S. charities in any given year. But the focus of concern for Barry Lynn and other advocates of stringent, if not to say hostile, separation of church and state was the promise candidate Obama made in July 2008 to bar publicly funded, religious nonprofits from hiring on the basis of religion. Lynn and his cohorts label such hiring preferences “discrimination” and want them outlawed. (more…)