Conde backs US-Africa Faith Based mission: B* enlarges his base.

[jazzjunkysue]

A U.S. Faith Initiative for Africa

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ministers29may29,0,6935816,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

(From me: This is how they do it: Lure churches with money and power. They want to give the churches the right to discriminate in their hiring of US workers (hire themselves) as they spend tax dollars on so-called faith based missions in Africa. The only problem is, in this article there's no mention on who will volunteer to MOVE to africa to do this missionary work. It's simply a way to buy the african church pulpits, and they're targeting those on TV with the biggest followings. Thus, the neo-cons enlarge their base. Never mind the fact that there is absolutely no mention of anything that will help fight AIDS.)

Secretary of State Rice and black pastors discuss a joint effort to fight AIDS.
By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger
Times Staff Writers

May 29, 2005

WASHINGTON — Escalating its courtship of a politically powerful constituency, the Bush administration is teaming up with some of the nation's best-known and most influential black clergy to craft a new role for U.S. churches in Africa.

The effort was launched last week, when more than two dozen leading African American religious figures met privately with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and senior White House officials at the State Department, according to administration officials and meeting participants.

The hourlong session focused largely on how the administration's faith-based initiative could be expanded to combat the spread of HIV and provide help for tens of millions of children orphaned by the epidemic across Africa.

A senior aide to Rice, James Wilkinson, said the meeting reflected her belief that more African American organizations "need to get involved in the president's Africa agenda."

If it goes forward, the collaboration could result in a substantial expansion of black church participation in the faith-based initiative, from a largely domestic focus to a broader overseas portfolio that pastors believe could make hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars available for the churches to combat AIDS and related social ills internationally.

Rice and the pastors discussed the possibility of establishing an office of faith-based initiatives within the State Department that would direct federal funds for overseas aid to church and community groups, as similar offices have done in other Cabinet agencies.

Illustrating the political benefit of that relationship, White House officials injected some Capitol Hill strategy into the session. They solicited support among the black pastors for controversial legislation that would allow faith-based charities in the U.S. to discriminate in hiring based on an applicant's religious beliefs — a provision that has spurred opposition from some Democrats and civil rights groups.

But rather than lowering partisan suspicions, the meeting raised them. The high-level session occurred the same day that the all-Democratic Congressional Black Caucus conducted a long-planned outreach meeting with 200 black pastors from across the country seeking to solidify bonds between the Democrats and religious leaders. Some saw the State Department meeting as an effort to upstage the black caucus.

It was the latest sign of increasingly fierce competition between Republicans and Democrats for the support of religious voters, in this case a key element of the Democratic base.
The meeting was dominated, however, by evangelical pastors — many of them, like Bishops T.D. Jakes of Dallas and Charles E. Blake of Los Angeles, known to national television audiences.

White House strategists view black ministers as a path into a voter bloc that has traditionally been Democratic but is conservative on social issues such as abortion, school vouchers and same-sex marriage.

"There is a huge pressing need for care for AIDS orphans," said Susan Rice, now a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. Noting that past high-level meetings had been dominated by African American churches sympathetic to the White House, she said: "It's important to involve mainline African American denominations … so that the effort is not viewed solely as an effort at Republican Party base-building."

In many ways, the differences over the discrimination issue — and the dueling meetings in Washington last week — illuminated the larger tug of war in national politics for the sympathies of black clergy and, ultimately, the electoral support of their congregations.

Some analysts maintain that the GOP's success in boosting the black vote for Bush in Ohio last year from 9% to 16% — an increase attributed to outreach to black pastors — secured the president's reelection. To fight back, the Democrats and their allies have launched an array of countermeasures, including last week's conference with ministers and the Congressional Black Caucus.
Cummings said the caucus was establishing regional forums, which would begin this summer, to educate clergy on national issues.