Meghan Clyne writes in the May 3 issue of the Weekly Standard that the Obama Administration, via the Bush-established Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is working to “bring the gospel of climate change…to a pulpit near you.” Last month the advisory council for the office presented the administration with a report titled, “A New Era of Partnerships,” which aimed to set objectives in the following areas: Economic Recovery and Domestic Poverty, Fatherhood and Healthy Families, Environment and Climate Change, Global Poverty and Development, and Interreligious Cooperation.
A number of critics have found Bush’s “faith-based” model of cooperation on social issues to be unconstitutional, and the continuation of the office during the Obama administration has been strongly criticized, but the mixing of church and state is not Clyne’s beef.
She asks what climate change has to do with social policy and concludes that the effort is simply a plan to use the faith-based network to spread the administration’s green gospel. Clyne, the prudish former speech-writer for both Laura and George Bush and a voice easily confused with Sarah Palin’s, had nary a word of criticism for the office when the last administration was using it to bring the incarcerated to God or to keep students from getting sex education or condoms. She concludes, apparently more offended by energy-efficient light bulbs and recycling bins than the spread of AIDS and STDs:
The ultimate aim of all this government-supported retrofitting is clear: “Regional staff would work to engage local faith-and community-based groups to help meet Obama administration targets for greening buildings and promoting environmental quality.” [Emphasis added.]