Religion & Law

Kathleen Parker (certainly no "conservative") points out, here, that a press whose "separation!" flags were flying high when President Bush proposed his "Faith-Based Initiative" has been blase and unbothered by Pres. Obama's similar program:

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. . . .

Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (and director of the Evangelicals in Civic Life program) . . . insists that the disparate levels of scrutiny can't be attributed only to timing and busy schedules.

"Sure, there's always a lot going on in Washington with any new administration. But can you imagine the outcry if Bush had hired a 27-year-old Pentecostal preacher to run the faith-based office and surrounded him with a 25-member advisory board made up of people largely sympathetic to his policy agenda?"

In fact, Bush appointed University of Pennsylvania political science professor John DiIulio, a Democrat, to run his program. Cromartie maintains that the greater attention to Bush was because the media were suspicious that his faith-based initiative was an attempt to install a theocracy. . . .