June 10, 2002
Towey has walked the faith-based road he advocates
___By Adelle Banks
___Religion News Service
___WASHINGTON (RNS)--Inside a townhouse across the street from the White House, Jim Towey pulls out evidence of his former life.
___Folded away in a dresser drawer is a T-shirt emblazoned with the likeness of Mother Teresa on a cinnamon bun. Although he jokes about the dozen years he was a pro bono lawyer defending the famous nun from unauthorized marketing, he turns solemn when he speaks of her influence on his views about poverty.
Before coming to the White House staff, Jim Towey worked one-on-one with the poor and needy, inspired by Mother Teresa. RNS photo
___"I hadn't been around America's poor or around sick people or dying people," said the new director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. "Mother threw me into the deep end there in Calcutta, and that's where I learned to swim."
___In a 1985 visit to her ministries to the impoverished, he expected to get a tour and tuck a $20 bill in the hand of a nun. Instead he was told: "Here's some solution and here's some cotton and clean this fella in Bed 46 that has scabies."
___Towey (pronounced TOO-ee) later became a volunteer with Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity and lived in the order's Gift of Peace AIDS home in Washington in 1990.
___Fueled by his personal experience with the disadvantaged and his jobs on Capitol Hill and in Florida politics, Towey now directs the office President Bush hopes will increase access to federal funding for faith-based groups providing social services.
___He keeps a small piece of paper handy each day with the list of politicians, religious leaders and non-profit executives with whom he will meet. In recent weeks he has touted the office's plans at a forum examining research on government partnerships with faith-based groups, cheered on the proposed Charity Aid, Recovery and Empowerment Act and addressed the Anti-Defamation League's National Leadership Conference.
___The current form of the bipartisan Senate legislation, which would implement aspects of Bush's initiative, leaves out the controversial expansion of charitable choice, a welfare reform provision that increased governmental funding of faith-based social service groups.
___But some say the debate over charitable choice, which has prompted questions about church-state separation and potential discrimination in hiring by faith-based groups receiving federal money, remains unfinished business for the administration.
___"The fight is over, in many ways, these very questions," said James Skillen, president of the Center for Public Justice, which has been a proponent of charitable choice. "How are faith-based groups going to be defined and recognized?"
___Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, preceded Towey as a legislative assistant to former Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore. He said Towey is likely to be influenced by Hatfield as well as Mother Teresa in his attempts to focus more on the poor than on politics.
___"He's got to rescue this initiative from partisan politics from both sides, and I think he's got a fair chance of doing that," said Granberg-Michaelson.
___Towey, 46, said he expects the controversy over civil rights and religious liberty to continue.
___"What I don't want to see is the poor held hostage to this debate," he said. "What I do think is going to be an issue is how do we make sure that while faith-based organizations maintain their religious identity and character, that they also aren't preaching on Uncle Sam's dollar, because that is not what President Bush envisions."
___It is clear that Towey's own work and faith are intertwined. His office features photos of his former boss in her traditional habit and his current one, waving a flag at a Pentagon memorial service. On his neat desk, a Bible rests on an easel, open to his favorite chapter in the Gospel of Luke, the story of the rich man, who journeyed to hell, and Lazarus, a beggar who ended up in heaven.
___"My career goal is to get to heaven," Towey said of his daily attendance at mass. "I'm no saint, trust me; that's why I have to get to mass."
___ He makes regular stops at sites like the Missionaries of Charity home and other places where he meets the needy face-to-face.
___"I need to get out ... to the homeless shelters and the drug treatment programs to keep focused on why I'm here in this job," he said. "That keeps my batteries recharged."
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