New Challenges for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships

The Berkley Center hosted a symposium which addressed the future possibilities and challenges facing the rechristened White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Panelists E.J. Dionne, Ira C. Lupu, Melissa Rogers, and Stanley Carlson-Thies addressed issues related to President Obama's reconfiguration of the Office's mission. including whether to bar religious groups from using religion as a basis for hiring, and how to pursue common ground on divisive "culture wars" issues. A key theme was the degree of continuity and discontinuity to be expected with the outreach strategies of the Bush administration and whether the office would inevitably be drawn into partisan politics.