The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has created multiple agencies dedicated to interfaith, and the State Department’s Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives is the newest addition.
Like the other offices, it will share the common goal of empowering interfaith cooperation, said Guruamrit Khalsa, MA Candidate studying US foreign policy at American University and a 2011 Ohio University graduate.
“The State Department’s office will affect the countries where the initiatives are targeted, but we are affected locally by other agencies,” Khalsa said. “The overall idea is to work with faith communities to get more involved with policy and thinking.”
In 2011, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships launched its Interfaith Service Campus Challenge which United Campus Ministry’s Better Together campaign participated in.
The challenge incorporates goals set by the Interfaith Youth Core and national goals set by the White House, said Melissa Wales, executive director of UCM.
“This year’s proposal has priority issues that are national priority areas that sort of guide the work that AmeriCorps does,” she said. “They want you to look at the list and cover topics such as the environment and align it with interfaith action.”
Any government support of faith-based initiatives tends to receive a lot of scrutiny, Khalasa said.
“At the end of the day, it’s important for the government to be in this kind of work because you can’t separate religion from things like domestic policy,” she said. “We don’t want the government to lift any religion over another, so it’s important to stress impartiality and focus on bringing faith groups and third-parties together.”
But interfaith communities don’t need government support to stand on their own; members of the communities and charities can bolster them, said Chase Peterson-Withorn, a senior studying political science and executive board member of Students For Liberty.
“I think that we should have as little government as possible and this doesn’t seem like something that’s a necessary or even convenient government action,” he said. “But just because I object to the government providing a good or service doesn’t mean that I object to the good or service being provided at all.”
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