IN THEORY:

President Obama recently announced his intention to maintain his predecessor’s faith-based office in the White House without making a key change he promised on the campaign trail: That organizations receiving federal money couldn’t discriminate on hiring on the basis of religion. What do you think of the president’s decision to allow religious organizations receiving federal grants to hire only people of the same religion?

I think President Obama simply applied common sense in making the decision to leave the present policy unchanged. He realized it ultimately serves to further the interests of the federal government to encourage those who are doing work that is for the common good to continue operating in the way that has proven to be successful. This means permitting them to employ those who adhere to their core values and share their mission goals, even if that increases the likelihood that they will look to hire first from within their own faith tradition. This should result in people of all faiths being well-served, which should be the purpose of the initiative.

Pastor Brad Stienstra

Newport Harbor Lutheran Church

I think the president was correct in leaving the policy as it stood under the Bush administration. We presume that the religious charity is in fact serving humanity, which in turn strengthens our society and ultimately our country. If faith-based charities are forced to violate their faith, they will have ceased to be true to themselves, and thus of no real value to God or man.

Pastor Dwight Tomlinson

Liberty Baptist Church

Newport Beach

No matter how you cut it, just having a “faith-based” government program is wrong in the first place. Obama should have simply dis- continued that whole program, which was simply another one of President Bush’s many missteps.

There is no way that the government can have such a program without favoring one religion over all the others, whether intentional (as under Bush) or not. Church and state should be fully separated, as the founders intended.

But, if there is such a program, no public tax money should go to support church programs when paid workers are required to be members of a specific church, or to support a particular belief system.

That type of discrimination is as bad as racial or ethnic discrimination.

The Obama administration should oppose discrimination of any kind.

Jerry Parks

member, Humanist Assn. of Orange County