INTER-RELIGIOUS COOPERATION
|
The Leader of the Free World
President’s Advisory Council on
Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
EXCERPTS FROM
President’s Advisory Council
Report
of
Recommendations
to the
President
+++++
COUNCIL MEMBERS
Diane Baillargeon,
President and CEO, Seedco
Anju
Bhargava,
President, Asian Indian Women in America Founder,
Bishop Charles Blake,
Presiding Bishop, Church of God in Christ
The Reverend Canon Peg Chemberlin,
President, National Council of Churches;
Fred Davie, Senior Director, The
Arcus Foundation
Nathan J . Diament, Director of Public Policy,
Dr .
Joel C . Hunter,
Senior Pastor, Northland, A Church
Distributed
Harry Knox,
Director, Religion and Faith
Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie,
Bishop, Thirteenth Episcopal District,
Dalia Mogahed,
Senior Analyst and Executive Director,
The Reverend Otis Moss, Jr
.,
Pastor Emeritus, Oliviet
Institutional Baptist Church
Dr .
Frank Page,
Vice-President of Evangelization, North American Mission Board; Dr . Eboo Patel, Founder and Executive Director, Interfaith Youth Core Anthony R.
Picarello, Jr., General Counsel, United States
Melissa Rogers, Council Chair, Director, Center for Religion and Public
Affairs
Rabbi David saperstein,
Director and Counsel,
The Reverend William J .
shaw,
President, National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
Judith Vredenburgh,
Immediate Past President and CEO,
Jim Wallis, President and CEO, Sojourners
The Reverend Dr .
sharon E . Watkins,
General Minister and President,
President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood
Partnerships - March 2010
INTRODUCTION
It
is difficult to overstate the generosity of the American spirit.
From the rubble of Haitian
neighborhoods to underserved communities across our own
country ,Americans are
working to address the needs of the most vulnerable among us. The
Government is often a
partner in this critical work, collaborating with local groups to
serve those in need.
It is difficult to overstate the generosity of the American spirit.
From the rubble of Haitian
neighborhoods to underserved communities across our own
country ,Americans are
working to address the needs of the most vulnerable among us. The
Government is often a
partner in this critical work, collaborating with local groups to
serve those in need.
The Council shall bring together leaders and experts in fields
related to the work of
faith-based and neighborhood organizations in order to: identify
best practices and
successful modes of delivering social services; evaluate the need
for improvements
in the implementation and coordination of public policies relating
to faith-based and
other neighborhood organizations; and make recommendations to the
President,
through the Executive Director [of the White House Office of
Faith-Based and
Neighborhood Partnerships], for changes in policies, programs, and
practices that
affect the delivery of services by such organizations and the needs
of low-income
and other underserved persons in communities at home and around the
world.
Within this report, the Advisory Council proposes a number of such
recommendations, and it urges President Obama and his Administration
to adopt them. As members of this
Council, we are encouraged by the fact that the President and his
Administration have made
sustained dialogue with a diverse set of leaders a key part of this
process, and we thank
them for inviting the recommendations we present here.
President Obama asked the Council to focus its attention on making
recommendations in
the following priority areas: Economic Recovery and Domestic Poverty
Environment and Climate Change
Fatherhood and Healthy Families
Global Poverty and Development
Interreligious Cooperation
Reform of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
Pp. iv & v
+++++
Cooperation
Members of the Taskforce
Archbishop Vicken
Aykazian,
Immediate Past President, National Council of Churches; and
Legate, Diocese of the Armenian Church of America
Anju
Bhargava,
President, Asian Indian Women in America;
Founder, Hindu American Seva Charities
Nathan J . Diament,
Director of Public Policy, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of
America
The Reverend Wesley Granberg-Michaelson,
General Secretary, Reformed Church in America
Bishop Mark Hanson,
Presiding Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Dr
.
Joel C .
Hunter, senior Pastor,
Northland, A Church Distributed
Dr
.
Ingrid Mattson,
President, Islamic Society of North America
Dalia Mogahed, Senior Analyst and Executive Director, The
Center for Muslim Studies, Gallup
The Reverend Otis Moss, Jr
.,
Pastor Emeritus, Oliviet Institutional
Baptist Church
Dr
.
Eboo Patel,
Founder and Executive Director, Interfaith Youth Core
Rabbi David saperstein,
Director and Counsel, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
James D .
standish, JD, MBA,
Department of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty,
Seventh-day Adventist Church World Headquarters
Dr
.
William Vendley,
Secretary General; and
The Reverend Donald "Bud" Heckman,
Director for External Relations, Religions for Peace
Miroslav
Volf, Director, Yale Center for Faith and Culture
P. 69
The Seventh-day Adventist Church did not make it to Council
membership status, but there is its representative on the
Inter-Religious Cooperation list – in the embrace of Caesar and the
world’s false religions.
'A Seventh-day Adventist
Church representative joined other faith leaders at the White House
this week to share ideas on inter-religious cooperation with a
government office launched last year to give community organizations
-- including faith groups -- a voice in policy decisions. . . . "The intersection of faith
and government is complex and fraught with pitfalls, but ignoring
[them] doesn't make them go away," said James D. Standish, a task
force member who also directs United Nations relations for the
Adventist world church's department of Public Affairs and Religious
Liberty. "Our goal was to provide
thoughtful guidance to the president on ... means he may want to
employ to improve the way the government relates to faith," said
Standish, who wrote the religious liberty section of the report. Standish lent the task
force an expert grasp on "the role that church-state separation and
religious freedom play in keeping faith independent and vital," said
Melissa Rogers, council chair and director for Religion and Public
Affairs at the Wake Forest University Divinity School.
This all looks well at first sight, but it is deceptive.
A. T. Jones represented the Seventh-day Adventist Church
before Congress on the Blair Amendment; however, he was there as a
representative from the outside. In
these times the Church is burrowing into membership in apostate
church organizations, and into the centers of temporal power. The
motto seems to be “if you can’t beat them [by the power of Truth]
join them.”
The rationalization is a delusion, proving that when you depart from
the Truth, you also depart from the reality of Truth.
And then
the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with
the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His
coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to
the working of Satan,
with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all
unrighteous deception
among those who perish, because
they did
not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
And for this reason God will send them
strong delusion,
that they should
believe the
lie,
that
they all may be condemned who
did not believe the truth but had
pleasure in unrighteousness.
What stronger delusion
can beguile the mind than the pretense that you are building on the
right foundation and that God accepts your works, when in reality
you are
working out many things
according to worldly policy
and are sinning against Jehovah? Oh, it is a great deception, a
fascinating delusion, that takes possession of minds when men who
have once known the truth,
mistake the form of
godliness for the spirit and power thereof
. . .” |