‘Faith-Based’ Group’s Hire Of Former Obama Staffer Raises Funding Questions

A former Barack Obama campaign staff member abruptly stepped down from his new job with the National Association of Evangelicals’ (NAE) relief agency after questions were raised about the appointment.

Andrew Mwavua was hired to be national campaign director for World Relief, the charity arm of the NAE. His appointment was announced in August, but he resigned less than a month later after World, an evangelical news magazine, wrote a story about him.

In the piece, World implied that the NAE had hired Mwavua due to his ties to Obama in an effort to make sure that government “faith-based” money keeps flowing.

Although World Relief is an NAE project, much of its funding comes from the taxpayers. Government grants account for about half of its $60 million budget.

World Relief received $31 million from the Bush administration in 2008, World reported. Agency officials were apparently worried that the funding might go down under Obama.

Announcing Mwavua’s hiring, the NAE pointed to his ties to the Obama campaign.

“Whatever one thinks of Obama’s governing, who can deny the brilliance of his organizing by the current administration?” wrote Don Golden, NAE senior vice president of church engagement, in a letter to supporters.

Golden and Mwavua both told World that the hiring was not an attempt to curry favor with the Obama administration. Mwavua said he would use the organizing skills he learned while working on the Obama campaign to mobilize churches.

The magazine pointed out that Mwavua is a Seventh-day Adventist and badgered him about his stance on abortion. When asked if he is “pro-life,” Mwavua replied, “I am not pro-abortion.”

Mwavua and the NAE refused to comment on his decision to step down.

In other news about “faith-based” funding:

• A Washington Post blog called “On Faith” recently asked several religious and secular leaders, “Should religious charities that receive federal grant money be allowed to discriminate in hiring?” A majority of the respondents said “no.”

“I don’t think we’re being real smart if we allow charities that receive federal funds to discriminate in hiring on the grounds of religious beliefs,” wrote the Rev. Susan K. Smith, senior pastor of Advent United Church of Christ in Columbus, Ohio. “For as long as I have been involved in church work, I have been told that in applying for grants, we need to be inclusive of everyone. I think it’s good policy.

Arch-conservative columnist and evangelical Christian Cal Thomas warned the church against getting too entangled with the state.

“When you get in bed with the lower kingdom,” he wrote, “you ultimately must forsake the higher kingdom and compromise your beliefs in order to satisfy the state. With shekels come shackles. Better not to have taken the money and ‘pray it in,’ as they used to say.”

One minority religious leader pointed out that only particular faiths have received the funding.

“Today, virtually no faith-based groups based in non-Abrahamic faiths receive any federal largesse,” wrote Aseem Shukla, co-founder and board member of the Hindu American Foundation. “It is not that they are not involved in community service or outreach. More minority faith groups need representation, and only groups that commit to federal standards in hiring practices and upholding the Establishment Clause asserting the separation of church and state should be beneficiaries.”