NEW BUSH OFFICE SEEKS CLOSER TIES TO CHURCH GROUPS

WASHINGTON President Bush has selected a University of Pennsylvania
professor of political science to head the first federal office intended to
promote the integration of religious groups into federally financed social
services, several Bush advisers said today.

The advisers said the opening of the office and the appointment of John J.
DiIulio Jr. to fill it would almost certainly be announced at a White House
event on Monday, and they acknowledged that it would draw heated opposition
from organizations and religious groups that advocate a strict separation
of church and state.

But the encouragement and government financing of faith-based programs was
a signature campaign issue for Mr. Bush, who has said he reads the Bible
every day. And the decision to entrust the new federal office in charge of
that effort to Mr. DiIulio, a widely published expert on juvenile crime
with impressive academic credentials, is an example of the political
caution with which the Bush administration will proceed.

The choice of Mr. DiIulio, in fact, is only one of several ways in which
Mr. Bush and his aides are trying to blunt any impression that what the
president is doing amounts to an evangelical endeavor.

"John is a social scientist who believes in empirical evidence," said one
Bush adviser, stressing Mr. DiIulio's focus on provable results from
faith-based social programs that address problems like substance abuse,
youth violence and teenage pregnancy. The adviser also emphasized that Mr.
DiIulio does not see faith-based programs "as a panacea," but rather as one
arrow in a quiver with plenty of others.

In addition to Mr. DiIulio, the other central figure in the effort is
Stephen Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis who was the chief
domestic policy adviser for Mr. Bush's presidential campaign.

Several Bush advisers said Mr. Goldsmith would be the chairman of a new
national advisory board whose work will complement that of the new federal
office. Mr. Goldsmith will also serve as an official adviser to Mr. Bush on
the issue.

Mr. Bush and his aides do not want the proposals related to faith-based
programs that they unveil to seem too driven by religion. Indeed, the
president's goal is to find new ways for the federal government to
encourage private charities -- including but not limited to religious
groups -- to provide more social services.

To that end, the title of the new federal office will allude not just to
faith-based programs but also to community initiatives, although several
advisers said the order in which the words "faith" and "community" would be
placed was under debate.

Additionally, Mr. Bush has invited not only leaders of faith-based groups
but also the heads of other not-for-profit organizations to meet on Monday
morning at the White House to kick off a week of events intended to
describe and promote the president's vision.

The guest list, according to one of the people on it, includes the Rev.
Stephen E. Burger, executive director of the Association of Gospel Rescue
Missions; Sara E. Melendez, president and chief executive officer of
Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofit organizations and foundations;
and Millard Fuller, founder and president of Habitat for Humanity
International, the ecumenical house-building group.

"It is about faith-based institutions, but it's also about more than that,"
said another Bush adviser, referring to Mr. Bush's plan to encourage
private groups to administer more of the kinds of local programs often
provided by government.

A more thorough integration of faith-based and other not-for-profit groups
into federally financed social services is a cornerstone of compassionate
conservatism, a political philosophy with which Mr. Bush has strongly
identified himself.

Compassionate conservatism holds that while the government should limit the
scope of the social services it provides, it should take an active role as
a catalyst and source of financing for work done by neighborhood and
religious groups.

Mr. Bush has said some of the groups with the best results for
rehabilitating prisoners or fighting drug abuse are ones that take
religious and spiritual approaches. He has also said the government should
not hesitate to give money to these groups, as long as secular groups that
provide similar services are also available.

There are signs that these initiatives may elicit bipartisan support. This
morning, on the ABC News program "This Week," Representative Richard A.
Gephardt of Missouri, the House minority leader, signaled interest in Mr.
Bush's approach.

The Bush administration will roll out these initiatives with the utmost
care, under the guidance of Mr. DiIulio, who is Catholic, and Mr.
Goldsmith, who is Jewish.

Although both are well liked by religious conservatives, neither is an
ideological lightning rod like Marvin Olasky, another proponent of
faith-based programs and compassionate conservatism. Mr. Olasky was with
Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. DiIulio at a long meeting with Mr. Bush in Austin,
Tex., nearly two years ago.

"It's not just that we're paying attention to the politics of it," one of
the Bush advisers said. "We're paying attention to the pragmatics of it. I
think we're doing it right, and I think we're going to be careful about it."

Mr. DiIulio's resume makes him seem like a personification of Mr. Bush's
attempts to retain the support of religious conservatives while also
courting moderates and building a broad base of support.

He is a fellow at both the Manhattan Institute, which is a conservative
think tank, and the Brookings Institute, which is not. In a two-month
period in the summer of 1999, he wrote major articles for The Weekly
Standard, a conservative publication, and for The New Democrat, a moderate
one. He identifies himself as a new Democrat.

Mr. DiIulio has also done extensive work with black pastors in urban areas,
and one of the Bush administration's hopes is that its advocacy of
faith-based programs will be a bridge to black ministers and win some
support with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Mr. Bush garnered the support of about 9 percent of black voters in the
presidential election and has been reaching out aggressively to African-
Americans ever since. This morning, he, his wife, Laura, and his parents
attended a Methodist church here with a predominantly black congregation.

For years, Mr. DiIulio, who taught at Princeton before the University of
Pennsylvania, was known more for his work on criminal justice issues than
on his interest in faith-based programs. He was among the voices loudly
advocating increased prison construction in the early 1990's and wrote a
1996 book about the war against crime, "Body Count," with John P. Walters
and William J. Bennett, the former education secretary and drug czar.

Mr. Goldsmith, a former prosecutor, was a two-term mayor in Indianapolis
who privatized everything from golf course construction to sewage treatment
and showed an interest in revitalizing long-neglected inner-city
neighborhoods. Late in his second term, he started the Front Porch
Alliance, a group that acted as a liaison between religious congregations
- -- mostly urban African-American churches -- and government.

For his work with churches, Mr. Goldsmith, a Republican, was lauded by many
evangelical Christian leaders. But some Jewish leaders said they were
nervous about an approach that redirects tax dollars to churches.

"There's a lot of respect for Stephen Goldsmith," said Rabbi David
Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
"Many in the Jewish community know him and respect him, but any time you
have a formal government endorsement of religion that this faith-based
office conveys, that takes us down a path that too often in our history has
turned out to be disastrous for religious freedom and religious tolerance."