The Brookings Institution organized a discussion on Dec. 17, “Four More Years for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.” Many were surprised when, in July, 2008, candidate Barack Obama announced that he would maintain the federal faith-based initiative, one of President Bush’s signature initiatives. Four years later, the Obama initiative has a track record and will soon be launching into its second four years. How should it be evaluated? How should it be changed?

The federal faith-based initiative is important to all faith-based organization, whether or not they receives federal dollars. That’s because the initiative helps to determine how the federal government relates generally to faith-based and other private organizations, e.g., when it regulates private organizations. And it is broadly important also because the federal rules for funding faith-based organizations follow federal dollars to state and local governments, where those federal dollars pay for many of the grants and contracts awarded by state and local government agencies.

The Brookings discussion featured two panels. One was headlined by Joshua DuBois, executive director of the White House faith-based office, and several of his colleagues. A second panel of discussants was headed by John DiIulio, first head of the White House office under President Bush. The others on the second panel were Richard Foltin of the American Jewish Committee, Sr. Norma Pimentel of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, and your eNews editor.

Some notes on my comments: I thanked the President for maintaining the faith-based initiative; for adopting as his own, with minor modifications, the level-playing field rules that had been developed before him; and for resisting fierce pressure and keeping the existing rules about religious hiring by faith-based organizations that get federal funds. I noted some positive developments of the Obama effort, but pointed to two troubling trends. (1) The Obama faith-based initiative tends to look to faith-based and community organizations to become advocates for administration policies and programs, rather than seeing its main focus as support for those organizations’ own initiatives. (2) By downplaying on websites and in publications a clear statement and explanations of the level-playing field rules, the initiative is allowing conventional federal grant and contract practice to become dominant again–a preference for larger private organizations, for state and local government agencies, and for secular values and partners.

In my conclusion, I recommended two things the Obama administration could do to draw more attention to the faith-based initiative-attention that is vital for the sake of transparency and oversight. Like President Bush, President Obama could make it a practice to visit exemplary faith-based organizations–the reporters and photographers who would follow would necessarily report on how the federal government relates to faith-based and secular private groups. And like President Bush, President Obama could adopt some policy positions that, while exactly right, are controversial with the media–thus winning plenty of publicity!

I recommended to President Obama two such policy positions: (1) having spoken up in favor of gay marriage, the President now should speak up in favor of practical steps to protect the religious freedom of the many faith-based organizations who will be affected by marriage redefinition, including adoption and foster-care agencies and organizations with spousal-benefit and employee-conduct policies; (2) the President should backtrack on the HHS contraceptives mandate and broaden the religious employer exemption to cover every kind of faith-based organization–not only churches but also parachurch service organizations.

I told the faith-based office and center staff that they would draw plenty of attention and-more important-do much good if they made it a priority to argue within the administration on behalf of religious freedom every time other officials act to elevate reproductive and LGBT rights. “That means,” I said, “that in the second four years of the Obama faith-based initiative, special attention needs to be paid to appropriately protecting the religious freedom of faith-based services.”