President George W. Bush launched a vital reorientation of government when, 20 years ago today, on January 29, 2001, he signed Executive Order 13199 to create the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The new office was created to lead the federal government’s new commitment to more effectively “enlist, equip, enable, empower, and expand the work of faith-based and other community organizations” to improve service to people in need. These organizations had long been trusted sources of assistance but were marginalized as the federal commitment to social welfare grew. Now, their role would be recognized and strengthened.

Several essential changes brewing before President Bush took office had led to this landmark day. New church-state rules and a consensus on a new relationship of partnership between government and faith-based organizations were forged during the Clinton administration. And, after the Bush administration, the faith-based initiative continued to be maintained by President Obama and by President Trump. The opportunity and challenge for President Biden is to build on these years of consensus and innovation. To be successful, his administration must pioneer a pluralist response to the conflicts between LGBT civil rights and religious freedom. Just like American citizens and faith communities, faith-based organizations are diverse too. They need the legal freedom to adhere to their animating convictions so they can continue their distinctive contributions to the common good. All service organizations, whatever their foundational convictions, should be able to contribute their best for the sake of their diverse neighbors.

On August 22, 1996, five years before President Bush’s Executive Order, President Clinton signed into law the federal welfare reform bill, which included a provision called Charitable Choice. Charitable Choice implemented the Supreme Court’s ruling that changed the “no-aid to religion” principle to a new requirement of government even-handedness. It required officials to choose the best service providers, whether faith-based or secular. And it simultaneously protected the right of all beneficiaries to receive services free of religious coercion and the freedom of faith-based providers to manifest their religious identity and offer voluntary religious activities. These new rules followed federal welfare funds down to state and local governments as they redesigned their welfare services. Because it carefully protected the rights of both beneficiaries and faith-based providers, Charitable Choice represented a new church-state consensus about the rules that must apply when the government awards funds to private organizations that provide services to the needy.

President Bush built on that consensus. On the same day he created the White House faith-based Office, he created Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in five major federal departments, including Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Labor. These Centers, which have since been added to, guided audits of their departments to identify and eliminate barriers in federal regulations and practices that prevented faith-based organizations, and also smaller secular organizations, from obtaining federal funds and to facilitate their partnership with the government. Guided by the Charitable Choice principles, the Bush administration put into the Code of Federal Regulations a new set of “Equal Treatment Regulations” to reform federal funding programs. The White House Office and the Centers offered community organizations information and training about federal funding. They helped federal departments develop new models of how government can more effectively partner with faith-based and secular organizations that are already active in their communities, are trusted, and work with persons and families in a more holistic way than government programs normally work.

Barack Obama committed as a candidate to continue the faith-based initiative because it is vital that “all hands” can contribute to solving society’s problems. As President, he renamed the initiative and created a new Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that offered guidance not only on federal partnerships but also on other policy priorities. The Obama administration emphasized non-financial partnerships, such as improving the ways faith-based and secular organizations that do not seek government funding coordinate with federal and state efforts to prepare for natural disasters and respond to homelessness, hunger, and aging. The administration took some actions that many faith-based organizations regarded as detrimental, such as pushing for contraceptives coverage and LGBT civil rights, without sufficient protections for religious organizations and religious freedom. Yet, it also acted to expand the church-state consensus on government funding. For example, it furthered protection for beneficiaries by guaranteeing a referral if they have religious objections to receiving services from a faith-based provider. And it expanded access to funding by ruling that, if a faith-based organization has a conscience reason not to provide one element of a package of services, it can still become the key service provider, with federal officials making sure that the missing element is supplied by an organization without a conscience objection.

The Trump administration, after a slow start, appointed a faith-based “Advisor” without reestablishing the White House Office and renamed the initiative the Faith and Opportunity Initiative. In the meantime, the Centers continued their work of outreach and equipping while working with their departments to redesign assistance programs. The rules for funding overseas relief and development programs, for example, were reformed so that smaller organizations, including faith-based relief organizations with extensive links to religious communities overseas, are welcomed into partnership. As the opioid crisis expanded, the Health and Human Services faith-based Center pioneered a change in addiction prevention funding, enabling states to expand service choices to include programs incorporating religious elements. President Trump encouraged faith-based partnerships by reforming regulations, for example, by clarifying the exemption in federal contracting that permits faith-based organizations to maintain their religious standards when they hire, a clarification necessitated by the Obama-era ban on job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity by federal contractors. Yet, the administration also weakened protections for beneficiaries, for example, by eliminating the guaranteed referral. That kind of change frayed the 20-year-old church-state consensus.

It seems certain that the Biden administration will reinvigorate the faith-based initiative, although specific plans have not yet been made public. Influential persons close to the administration have called for reestablishing a White House faith-based Office and for the initiative to be fully staffed and be given a significant voice in policy. They have advocated for restoring beneficiary rights to reestablish the consensus on church-state rules. What is not at all clear is whether the Biden administration will pursue its strong commitment to LGBT civil rights in a way that reflects and extends the faith-based initiative’s church-state consensus. Early signs are disheartening. Candidate Biden was a champion of the Equality Act, which would guarantee LGBT rights but also severely limit the ability of many faith-based organizations to continue to embody their deep religious convictions. His first-day Executive Order to advance LGBT protections is silent about the needed safeguards for religious freedom. What is needed is a both-and approach in which federal law protects the LGBT community while also protecting organizations and people committed to morally conservative sexual ethics. Only this kind of pluralism will enable all of America’s diverse organizations and religions to continue to make their best contributions to our diverse society.

The Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, as part of the Center for Public Justice, has helped to inspire, shape, and equip the faith-based initiative from its very beginning in the early 1990s. We regard it an essential and exemplary public policy innovation that embodies the civic and principled pluralism that is at the heart of our Christian public policy vision of how citizens and organizations holding different, even conflicting, convictions can live well together.