Greg W. Hamilton, president of the Vancouver, Wash.-based Northwest Religious Liberty Association, supports the idea of faith-based initiatives with an important qualification: He does not support government-funded faith-based groups discriminating in their hiring practices or offering sectarian programming. Hamilton is an ordained minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and a scholar of church-state issues.

Star Parker, founder of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education in Los Angeles, has expressed concerns about faith-based initiatives headed up by the government. Read a 2005 Agape Press interview posted by Crosswalk.com.

Jimmy Dorrell is co-founder and executive director of Mission Waco, a ministry to empower the poor, mobilize middle-class Americans and address systematic social injustices. He is pastor of Church Under the Bridge and also teaches classes at Baylor University and Truett Seminary in Waco.

Read “New Hampshire’s Social Service Contracts with Faith-Based Organizations,” an April 2004 report from the NH Center for Public Policy Studies

Peter Dobkin Hall is a lecturer in public policy and a senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He does research on social welfare policy and civic engagement and has held a teaching appointment in the Divinity School.

Marvin Olasky is editor of World magazine, based in Asheville, N.C. He is credited with coining the phrase “compassionate conservatism” and has been a proponent of the government’s faith-based initiatives. He is the author of Renewing American Compassion: How Compassion for the Needy Can Turn Ordinary Citizens Into Heroes (The Free Press, 1996).

Noel Castellanos is institute director of the Chicago-based Christian Community Development Association, which works to reclaim and restore under-resourced communities, and he was appointed to serve on the president’s council for Faith and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops supports the government’s faith-based initiatives. Read a 2005 statement posted on the website.

Samantha Jo Warfield is media contact for the Corporation for National and Community Service in Washington, D.C.