Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Trump’s Faith-Based Office Still Empty

Among the vacant administration positions waiting to be filled is one was supposed to be a high priority for President Trump — the office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The office, established under George Bush in 2001, serves as a bridge between the White House and faith communities and as a way of involving religious groups in government activity. For a president like Trump, elected with massive support of evangelical Christians and raising hopes for greater involvement of the group in setting the agenda, keeping the office vacant does not seem to make sense.

And as Religious News Service reports, there is no clear sign when Trump plans to staff the office, or who he will select to direct it. Trump has, however, made many overtures to the evangelical community, according to the report, including holding high level meetings that “began or ended in prayer,” said Johnnie Moore who served on Trump’s evangelical advisory board during the campaign. “Many evangelicals feel like the administration has an open-door policy,” Moore observed.

The office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is not the only religious outreach channel still unstaffed. The State Department has yet to appoint a new ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom and the White House has not announced who will serve as its liaison to the Jewish community.

Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected]

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.