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Obama Tries to Renew Faith in a Faith-Based Office (Amy Sullivan, Feb. 05, 2009, TIME)

At a time when the White House faith-based-initiatives office created by George W. Bush has precious few supporters on the left or right, President Barack Obama is following through with his campaign pledge to expand its scope and influence within his Administration. [...]

The council will work closely with the White House faith-based-initiatives office under the leadership of newly appointed director Joshua DuBois. The 26-year-old DuBois spearheaded religious outreach for Obama's presidential campaign and has been one of the President's closest advisers on religion. While in college, DuBois became an assistant pastor at a small Pentecostal church in Boston, and he helped make Obama's religious outreach the most extensive and comprehensive yet for a Democratic presidential campaign. He has also been behind some moves that have raised eyebrows, including Obama's participation in last summer's Presidential Forum at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church and, more recently, the selection of the Evangelical author and pastor to deliver the invocation at the Inauguration. [...]

That hiring question is the first landmine Obama will face. In Zanesville, he left no question as to where he stood on the issue. "If you get a federal grant," Obama said then, "you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help, and you can't discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion."

The statement caused an immediate uproar within the ranks of Obama's religious supporters, who pushed him to back off from the promise to undo Bush's Executive Order. He has not done so publicly, but several of them insist that Obama and his aides have given them private assurances that there will be no rapid movement to change the status quo with regard to religious hiring. If so, it would be a rare case of political ham-handness by the Obama team, because his secular supporters say they have been assured that the hiring change will take place.