Bush's Faith-Based Legacy (George W. Bush) (United States‪)‬

On June 1, 2004, at the first White House National Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, President George W. Bush delivered a revealing speech to an audience of more than 1,500 religious leaders and social workers from across the United States. In this speech Bush addressed the "relationship between people of faith and government policy" and articulated his perception that faith-based organizations are being discriminated against as a result of church-state regulations. At the beginning of his remarks the president thanked profusely various Christian representatives for their support and involvement in community services and praised the work of representatives from the faith-based programs he'd set up in seven cabinet departments since the announcement of his Faith-Based and Community Initiative (FBCI) in January 2001. Bush then launched into an oration on the importance of faith in American society and promised, on behalf of the federal government, to assist faith-based programs in their efforts to reach out to those in need.