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Trump is dismantling Obamas religion initiatives
Trump is dismantling Obama’s religion initiatives
He's replacing them with unofficial evangelical advisers.
Jack Jenkins
Oct 10, 2017, 8:00 am
President Donald Trump’s most devoted religious backers often claim the real estate mogul was catapulted into the Oval Office because of one reason: God put him there. But when the Trump administration issued an executive order in late September renewing a slate of federal advisory councils, the “God” bit was conspicuously absent. Left off the list was the White House Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, created in 2009 by Barack Obama as an extension of an office of the same name created by George W. Bush.
The omission may seem unexpected. But it represents just the latest example of Trump methodically erasing any hint of Obama’s engagement with religion.
Melissa Rogers, a lawyer and expert in church-state relations who headed the faith office during Obama’s second term, wasn’t surprised the 25-member council was cut. After all, she said, the Trump administration has yet to fill the vacant leadership slot in her old office.
“The advisory council was one part of our work with the faith community,” Rogers told ThinkProgress. “The advisory council itself was very important, but it was nested within a much greater universe.”
That universe is now slowly unraveling, according to Rogers and other former White House staffers.
“The continuance of this Evangelical Executive Advisory Board, even unofficially, and the apparent failure to have any comparable entity that is open to non-evangelicals, sends a troubling message that the administration prefers evangelicals over other people of faith.”
Some of the alterations have been subtle. For instance, few people noticed that Trump quietly ended the White House Easter Prayer Breakfast — a tradition created in 2010 under Obama — and replaced it with renewed emphasis on the National Day of Prayer (something Obama is falsely accused of ending).
But former staffers say the most striking shift is the way the Trump administration is dismantling a once-influential ecosystem of official interfaith councils and offices set up by previous presidents to advise on matters of faith.
In their place, the president appears to be substituting informal, amorphous, and comparatively un-vetted relationships with mostly evangelical Protestant Christian leaders who directly advise Trump — and possibly his entire cabinet.
more...
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-dismantling-obamas-religion-initiatives-49d89df9b0e4/
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