The Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, the go-to place for analysis of President Bush’s faith-based initiative, is going through its own transition even as the president prepares to leave office.

Instead of its usual annual December conference, the roundtable held a news conference Tuesday (Dec. 2) to release its “The State of the Law – 2008” report about legal developments related to government and faith-based groups.

“The Roundtable work will transition to our sister project, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,” said Richard Nathan, director of the Roundtable and the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York, at the news conference.

Both the Pew Forum and the Roundtable are funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

After the news conference, Nathan said it was expected that the project would last in its current form only during the Bush administration.

“That was always understood that we would be looking at this at a time when there’s a lot of focus on it under Bush,” he said. “You don’t know now how prominent this is going to be, this whole subject area.”

During his campaign, President-elect Obama said he would expand the White House initiative but would likely change rules related to funding faith-based groups that discriminate in hiring.

Whatever occurs, the Roundtable report concludes that the Bush administration made significant changes in reshaping government partnerships with faith-based organizations.

“We very much doubt that faith-based organizations will ever again be categorically disqualified from partnering with government in delivering social services,” the report concluded.

(Photo credit: www.albany.edu)