{"id":7615,"date":"2009-04-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/04\/05\/white-house-faith-based-council-gets-new-members-including-a-hindu\/"},"modified":"2009-04-05T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-05T12:00:00","slug":"white-house-faith-based-council-gets-new-members-including-a-hindu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/04\/05\/white-house-faith-based-council-gets-new-members-including-a-hindu\/","title":{"rendered":"White House Faith-Based Council Gets New Members, Including a Hindu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/44\/2009\/04\/06\/white_house_faith-based_partne.html?wprss=44\">voices.washingtonpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">WASHINGTON, DC, USA, April 6, 2009 (with RNS): The White House today announced ten more members of the council that will advise the president on faith-based and other key issues, such as fatherhood and poverty. The additions bring the council&#8217;s ranks to 24 religious and secular leaders. The office is meant primarily to support faith-based groups, including by helping them get government funding or access to legal guidance about church-state boundaries. Under President Obama, it has laid out several priorities including interfaith relations, abortion reduction and improving the environment.<\/p>\n<p>Several new members come from groups representing minorities, including Anju Bhargava, a Hindu, founder of Asian Indian Women of America. In picking a diverse council, Obama fulfilled a campaign pledge to listen to an array of religious voices, said the Rev. Jennifer Butler, executive director of Faith in Public Life, a progressive think tank in Washington. The council includes noted conservatives, like the Rev. Frank Page, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and high-profile liberals, like Fred Davie, the openly gay senior adviser for the non-profit Public\/Private Ventures. &#8220;There&#8217;s always a temptation to just get people on board who agree with you on everything,&#8221; she said. &#8220;But Obama is sticking to his word that he wants to bring diverse Americans together to talk about even some of the most controversial issues of the day.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>The council had its first real meeting today. The meeting will continue through tomorrow and is meant to be an overview of the office and its priorities.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>voices.washingtonpost.com WASHINGTON, DC, USA, April 6, 2009 (with RNS): The White House today announced ten more members of the council,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}