Right now, one service program I contribute to is in an internal struggle over a related Obama initiative. The program is part of a Catholic organization and its purpose is to feed the homeless. It is part of a larger framework that does other things, but this organization in itself does not engage in evangelization. This program isn’t overtly sectarian in nature but does have one prayer at the beginning of every run that say. We have a variety of people from other religions than Catholicism and no one has ever complained before—in short there wasn’t a problem.
But, now President Obama has launched his new “Interfaith and Community Service Challenge” and our institution is partaking. The program I am involved in is voluntarily going along with the “Interfaith Challenge” and we’ve recently “decided” (though the discussion is
far from over) that the prayer has to be removed because it’s against the spirit of the “Interfaith Challenge”.
Mind you, the entire point of the “Interfaith Challenge" is a “way to build understanding between different communities and contribute to the common good.”* It would seem to me that deleting all references to God (and the particular saint the program is dedicated to) does the exact opposite: it balkanizes religion into a separate sphere, removed from daily life and marginalized. Apparently the president believes that the way to get people to overcome religious differences is by deleting them.
*
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ofbnp/interfaithservice
