Obama in Zanesville

According to New York Times , Senator Obama went yesterday to Zanesville, Ohio, where he expressed his support for faith-based organizations—or, as he put it, for fulfilling the failed promises that the Bush administration had made. “When I’m President,” he said, “I’ll establish a new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The new name will reflect a new commitment.”

But his plans to create a new council—even as it risks contradicting his comment later in the same speech, “I believe that change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up”—is not as alarming as another plan he announced yesterday: a new requirement he would impose, prohibiting federally-funded faith groups from considering faith when hiring their own employees. As he put it, “If you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them—or against the people you hire—on the basis of their religion.”

In other venues, Obama has appealed to those in his party who think the Bush administration has delivered over America to church rule. In Zanesville, however, Obama seemed to want to run in the other direction, cheering on the faith-based organizations. Of course, his demand that they secularize their personnel rather mutes the cheer. But at least you can’t say he isn’t trying.