Faith-Based Initiative 2.0: the Bush Faith-Based and Community Initiative‪.‬

Critics of President George W. Bush's faith-based initiative (1) often claimed that it was not a serious public policy effort, but rather a political ploy aimed at pleasing the Republican white evangelical "base" and poaching African-American and Hispanic pastors and voters from the Democratic Party. However, even casual observers should have known better. If the initiative was just about politics, why did some thirty-six states, led by both Democrats and Republicans, create their own initiatives, maintaining them even when state leadership changed from one party to the other? (2) Why did the Pew Charitable Trusts invest in an eight-year project, the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, to track the initiative's goals, outcomes, and legal reforms? If the initiative was mere low politics, why did it spark so many books, journal and law review articles, and dissertations? (3) Any doubts that the Bush initiative was a serious policy should have been finally dispelled on July 1, 2008, when Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama proclaimed that he would expand and improve the initiative; (4) or when, during the transition period, he mandated a serious review of the initiative and its administrative apparatus; or when, soon after becoming President, he announced the formation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, his version of the Bush faith-based office, and appointed Joshua DuBois to head the new office. (5) Expanding and improving, reviewing and evaluating, new leadership and a renamed effort: There must have been a great deal of substance to the Bush faith-based initiative for Obama to take these actions.