PRRUCS Annual Issue: Vol. II (Spring 2021)

PRRUCS is pleased to announce its second annual collection of essays: Faith-Based Initiative at 25 Years: A Common Ground for Common Good Conversation. With the new administration’s re-establishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, a co-chair of the PRRUCS Common Ground for Common Good (C2G2) Project, reflected this spring on the 25 year arc of the faith-based initiative in his HistPhil essay, “The Biden Partnerships Plan is Faith-Based Initiative 5.0.”  Republished with permission below as Chapter 1, this seminal article elicited ten comments from other C2G2 colleagues, who respond from a diversity of experience and conviction, offering new insight into the past and future of government-funded faith-based social service.  The collection concludes with an Afterword by PRRUCS Faculty Director, John J. DiIulio, Jr., the inaugural director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Introduction: First 100 Days, Last 25 Years, and the Next “Godly Republic”? by Daniel J. M. Cheely

1. The Biden Partnerships Plan Is Faith-Based Initiative 5.0 by Stanley Carlson-Thies

2. New Faith-Based Frontiers: Black Lives Matter & “Dying of Whiteness” by Samuel Atchison

3. Will the Decline in Faith Institutions Harm the Faith-Based Initiative? by Jane Eisner

4. George W. Bush and Domestic Policy: The Faith-Based Office at its Most Personal by Tim Goeglein

5. Bush’s Faith-Based Program Helped Children of the Incarcerated by W. Wilson Goode

6. Where Does It End? The Religious Demand for Government Support Without Accountability to All Taxpayers by Marci Hamilton

7. Religion in the Public Square: Not so Divided After All by Michele Margolis

8. Faith That Hurts and Faith That Heals by Sister Mary Scullion

9. The New Faith-Based Office and The Case for Charitable Pluralism by Ron Sider

10. Government and Faith-Based Social Service: The Good & the Ugly by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

11. Muddling the Faith Based Concept by Tevi Troy

Afterword: Faith-Based, Then, Now, and Next by John J. DiIulio, Jr.