Taking the President on Faith

Oh, for those halcyon days when our biggest worry was whether the federal "faith-based" office might encourage a homeless person to find Jesus.

Remember that?

Hardly anyone talks much about the faith-based initiative begun by President George W. Bush and expanded by President Obama. And there was hardly a murmur about Obama's appointee to head the program, the Rev. Joshua DuBois, a 27-year-old Pentecostal preacher.

A comparison of how the media have treated the two presidents and their faith-based programs during the first six months of their administrations (2001 and 2009) is the subject of a new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The findings suggest a very different standard applied to each president.

When George W. Bush introduced the concept of a faith-based office, the original vision was to help nonprofit charities get government support to feed the hungry and house the homeless. From the reaction, you'd have thought Bush was trying to install a caliphate. Indeed, most newspaper stories focused on the blurring of church and state.

By contrast, when Obama upgraded and renamed the program -- the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships -- most stories focused on procedural questions and a new, 25-member faith-based advisory council. Few, if any, headlines questioned whether Obama might be using his faith-based office to advance liberal policies, whereas Bush was under persistent fire for allegedly pushing (horrors) a pro-life agenda.

The only issue that attracted much attention under Obama's watch -- also a concern under Bush -- was whether faith-based organizations receiving federal funds could make hiring decisions based on a person's religious beliefs. Obama has called for a review of the policy.

The Pew study used keyword searches to identify stories for analysis -- a total of 331 newspaper articles from January to June 2001 (281) and from January to June 2009 (50).

During the Bush years, stories were 50 percent more likely to be on the front page than in 2009, and separation of church and state was the top concern in 2001.

The study takes a stab at explaining these discrepancies. One obvious explanation is that the program was new under Bush. By the time Obama rolled into town, it was a known -- and not very threatening -- quantity. And Obama inherited a full menu of demanding issues, on top of which he added an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Who has time to nitpick nonprofits helping the poor?