Rev. Danny Fisher

The editors of The New York Times published an editorial recently about President Obama’s executive order to revamp rules and regulations for federally-funded projects involving faith-based and neighborhood organizations. It’s pithy and excellent, pointing out “a glaring omission” that remains to be fixed:

Ignoring one of Mr. Obama’s own important campaign promises, and a large coalition of religious, education and civil rights groups, the new decree fails to draw a firm line barring employment discrimination on the basis of religion. The order leaves untouched a 2007 Justice Department memo that dubiously concluded that the government cannot order religious groups not to discriminate as a condition of federal financing. That memo should have been withdrawn long ago by this administration.

Missing, too, from the new decree are any standards to govern the Justice Department’s promised “case-by-case” review of employment practices by religiously affiliated grantees. It remains unclear how many such reviews have been conducted since Mr. Obama took office, and whether groups that engage in religion-based discrimination are in any real jeopardy of losing money.

Read the rest here.

Many of the changes that were made came as a result of recommendations from the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Regular readers of this blog might remember that a while back, I published an article at the popular website Religion Dispatches about my own concerns with the Council. You can read it here.