Office of Faith-based and Community Partnerships

When Joshua Dubois visited St. Paul last May, the website for the White House's office on faith-based intiatives was still under construction. It's now up and running. And significantly, its name speaks not only of faith, but of community partnerships.

This led me back to Paul Tillich's Dynamics of Faith (1957), which I first read with Prof. Vern Faillettaz at St. Olaf College. If faith is understood as "the state of being ultimately concerned," Tillich says, "love and action are implied in faith and cannot be separated from it."

An implicit stamp of approval from the thought of Tillich, one of the foremost theologians of the twentieth century, won't insulate Dubois' efforts from right-wing attacks. But it certainly can't hurt.