Publications

Category: Legal/Constitutional

Document Type: Transcript

Panelists Include:

RICHARD NATHAN: Good morning. My name is Dick Nathan and I’m the director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government and the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy. The Rockefeller Institute is the public policy research arm of the state university of New York, and today’s conference is focused on the Faith-Based Initiative, the efforts of particularly the George W. Bush administration to bring more organizations – religious organizations, churches, other faith-based groups – into the world and work of social policy. The mission of the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy is to produce and disseminate the best independent social science research that we can, some of which we’re doing and what other people here at this conference are doing, to look at what is happening under the Faith-Based Initiative of the Bush administration. Our goal is not to take a position one way or the other but to provide a knowledge base and a knowledge network fostering and supporting intelligent debate and greater understanding of the role of religious groups in social policy. This is not a new subject. Religious organizations have been engaged in social welfare policy. But it has been given new emphasis in the last four years, and particularly under the current administration. President Bush doesn’t lose an opportunity when he talks to audiences about social issues to stress his interest in having his administration reach out to new players and more players, and particularly faith-based organizations. The administration has done this in an activist and innovative way. They’ve created a White House office. We’re going to hear from the head of the White House office this morning. They’ve created branch offices in federal agencies. There’s a lot going on all around the country to get people to know about, think about, and get involved in this new field. The Roundtable is tracking the legal, the fiscal, and the administrative components and activities of the initiative. When President Bush was governor of Texas he set up an office on faith-based social service. He said in the 2000 campaign one of the first things he would do is set up a national office in the White House, and he did that, and that’s been a busy and an active field, as I’ve indicated. We’re going to hear today from the head of the White House office, Jim Towey. We’re going to hear also from Congressman Chet Edwards of Texas. They’ll be on the second plenary. At lunch today we’re going to have a session, which ought to be especially interesting, of people in the media who are covering this field. What do they think about what’s going to happen in the next four years? What’s ahead for the Faith-Based Initiative? And that luncheon forum will be moderated by Jason DeParle, whose new book about welfare policy called “American Dream” is known to a lot of us here and is a very fine, important new book. After lunch there will be breakout sessions where prominent researchers are going to be talking about work that they’re doing, and there will be opportunities for people in this large audience – we’re glad to have such a large audience – to interact with each other and interact with other experts in the field. First, we move into the subject of this plenary session. There has been significant change in the law concerning the relationship between religion and government – religious groups and government. This is a complicated, subtle subject. It’s hard to get at and it’s very much in flux. We are very proud at the Rockefeller Institute to have the George Washington University Law School involved with us to study the legal aspects and implications of the Faith-Based Initiative. I’ll introduce our two leaders in that work, and they’re going to present their third annual report today at this conference on the legal research they’ve done on the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses, the first clauses in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This is a fundamental and exciting part of what we are learning about and talking about, and we are very pleased that our next two speakers have been so closely involved with the work of the Rockefeller Institute Roundtable, which, I’d like to mention, is ably headed by David Wright, who is here in the audience. I want to thank The Pew Charitable Trusts – Julie Sulc who is here from The Trusts – for the support they’ve given us and the fine way they’ve worked with us. So let me now introduce our two speakers. They’re going to make a presentation. There will be some time for Q&A after they’ve made their presentation. Our second speaker is Professor Bob Tuttle. He’s a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, from which he received his degree. He holds a Master’s degree from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and Ph.D. in religious ethics from the University of Virginia. In addition to teaching in law school, he’s a member of the board for the division for church and society of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The first speaker – and I’m introducing him second but he’s going to lead off – is Professor Chip Lupu, who is the F. Elwood & Eleanor Davis professor of law at George Washington University Law School. He graduated from Cornell University, Harvard Law School. He was on the appellate staff of the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice. He joined the faculty at George Washington Law School in 1990. He’s a nationally recognized scholar in constitutional law with an emphasis in his writing on the religious clauses which I mentioned in the First Amendment. So, Chip Lupu and Bob Tuttle will make a presentation of their new report

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