Faith-Based Policy Work: In Creative Transition

Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, who led the Center’s work on faith-based public policy reforms until the start of 2009, has established a new organization, the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance (IRFA), located on the web at http://irfalliance.org/. He can be reached at Stanley@irfalliance.org and 443-822-7599. Carlson-Thies remains involved with the Center for Public Justice as a non-resident fellow.

The Center’s work on policy issues of religious freedom, educational pluralism, and welfare reform will be tracked in this and other sections of our website. For an orientation to our approach to these issues, see the statements on religious freedom, education, and welfare in our Guidelines on Government and Citizenship series.

IRFA is dedicated to education, training, and advocacy activities to protect in the public square the religious identity, faith-based standards, and faith-shaped services of Christian and other parachurch ministries. The faith-based initiative, a major focus of Carlson-Thies’ work at the Center, emphasized a level playing field for faith-based groups interested in government funds. IRFA expands the focus to government rules that can wrongly restrict faith-based services when no government funds are received.

Carlson-Thies, who served for 15 months in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from its inception in 2001, at the start of George W. Bush’s first term, has continued to work with states and federal agencies on faith-based issues and is building a team to intensify that work.

Much of what Carlson-Thies has written over the past 15 years in Capital Commentary essays and other articles, reports, and studies will continue to be available through the Center’s website.