Release date: Sept. 24, 2004
Contact: Elaine Justice, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0643 or elaine.justice@emory.edu

Emory's Tipton Examines Faith-Based Initiatives

Sociologist Steve Tipton will take on the issue of the Bush administration's faith-based initiatives in a lecture titled "Why Churches Say No – Challenges Faith-Based Initiatives Pose to Religion & Family" at noon Monday, Sept. 27 at Emory Law School's Tull Auditorium, 1301 Clifton Road, Atlanta.

Tipton's talk, part of the Family Forum Series sponsored by Emory's Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion (CISR), is a preview of his forthcoming book on the topic, "Public Pulpits." Tipton contends in his new book that much of the controversy over faith-based initiatives proposed by the Bush administration is based on diametrically opposed views of the role of religion in American public life.

Tipton traces the current controversy from George W. Bush's statements about his own religious faith as a presidential candidate in 1999, to his appointment of John DiIulio to head the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, to the present-day disillusionment with the promises of compassionate conservatism.

When mainline Protestant denominations joined with some conservative Christian evangelicals, Jewish faith groups and labor unions to oppose faith-based initiatives, their list of downsides was long, says Tipton. Included among the risks cited, Tipton says, were "religious meddling in publicly funded social –welfare efforts and political interference in religious matters, including the prospect of government unfairly favoring some religious groups over others."

In fact, says Tipton, the ongoing debate in America over faith-based initiatives throws "little light on just how deeply the Bush administration's favoring of religious communities as social service providers ignores the role of religious institutions as moral witnesses, critics and advocates of governmental policy and action in public life."

Tipton is professor of sociology of religion at Emory's Candler School of Theology and a senior fellow at the CISR. His book will be among the published works that are part of a three-year research project on "The Child in Law, Religion and Society."

For more on the CISR and its projects, go to www.law.emory.edu/cisr/.

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